Are there any major pitfalls of switching to a permanent hybrid working model?

With many businesses now accepting that a full-time office workforce isn’t always necessary, more flexible ways of working are being kept in place after more than a year of homeworking arrangements. At first, working from home was viewed as a temporary emergency situation, but time and technology have proved that goals can still be achieved if things are done correctly. Alexandra explained some of the issues businesses are facing, after the period of change we’ve all experienced:

Alexandra responded: “Many businesses have decided that working from home has a place in their operational model moving forwards. They are looking to make the once temporary emergency situations, permanent solutions and there are many benefits of this. First and foremost, businesses need to consider what version of hybrid working their organisation is adopting. If they’ll be offering a fully flexible working environment where staff can choose whether to work from home or not on a day-to-day basis? Or will there be a more structured hybrid working model with a mix of pre-agreed time in and out of the office. Businesses have needed to find ways to keep operations running through the pandemic, but now they need to consider how to optimise work. This means that having people in the office for meetings and training might be preferable to working via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Also, spending time in the office as a team or department can be hugely beneficial and is a way of maintaining bonds within your workforce.”

Alexandra explained: “Technology and equipment will be a big issue for some businesses. In March last year, many people simply had to take equipment home to allow work to continue. So now, businesses need to think about what their team members need to make flexibility possible. Certain roles might use specialist technology that can only be provided in one place. Heavy data processing might need to be supported by high-specification computers or multiple screen set-ups, for example.”

She questioned: “Do your people have the right communications technology at home, supported by reliable software at the office or in the cloud? Do they need one laptop or separate workstation setups for the home and the office? Are home connections, such as broadband, suitable for the systems in place?”

Alexandra concluded: “Once the physical equipment is taken care of, the reality of managing teams remotely needs to be addressed. Your managers and team leaders may be doing a fantastic job, but it‘ll be beneficial to make sure that they’re given opportunities to obtain and hone the skills required to manage teams remotely.”

How will organisations be able to bring new starters on board in hybrid working set-ups?”

Alexandra provided her thoughts: “Onboarding new starters is something which has definitely needed to change. However, the changes might not be as difficult to achieve as you might think. It is a good idea to base new starters from the office for a short time for several reasons. First, making sure that equipment and technology is available and set up correctly is usually easier to do on-site. Then giving your new starters the best chance of fitting into their teams and getting used to the systems is important. While not everyone will be in the office, making sure that guidance is available from people in the workplace is essential if you’re going to get the most out of your new hires.

She continued: “Some time spent in the office is the ideal opportunity to see how new starters are fitting in. Early issues can be dealt with more quickly and questions or concerns can be addressed before your workers are expected to work from home. It’s also a good opportunity to set expectations about how the hybrid working arrangements work in your organisation, as every workplace will be slightly different.”

Alexandra finished by saying: “Finally, make sure time is set aside to check in with new starters after their first few weeks or month. It’s not only a great opportunity to make sure that their new role is going ok for them, but new starters can be a useful source of new ideas and suggestions, especially in relation to their onboarding experience.

Alexandra not only advises her clients about their HR and Employment Law issues but also manages her own teams remotely.

She offered us some practical advice: “For many people, managing teams remotely is a skill set that requires learning and practising. Businesses should check whether their managers and team leaders are trained and experienced, putting training in place where it’s needed.”

Alexandra added: “Consider how you will perform your regular management tasks in future. How will assessments be done? How often will you have team meetings and individual feedback sessions? Will you have these in the office or via Zoom/Teams/phone calls? Also consider your data reporting routines, to keep the right people in the loop about performance statistics: it’s a well-known fact that allowing your people to own their performance can help them to deliver better results. Do your reporting systems allow this to happen?”

She concluded: “When it comes to managing people in any situation, it’s too easy to overlook the quiet and focus on easily identifiable issues. When remote and hybrid workers make up your team, it’s even more important to make sure that you are devoting enough time to everyone, not just those with obvious needs.”

How can you bring about a positive change in your business as you implement hybrid working?

Alexandra explained: “Hybrid working is not an emergency response to the pandemic any longer. To make this a permanent option for staff there are some things that all businesses need to consider:

  1. Your staff may need contractual amendments to suit their new working arrangements. Their place of work will be changing so contracts of employment will need to take account of this. There are also a number of other clauses advised for those hybrid working such as confidentiality and security.
  2. Have a ‘hybrid working policy’ in place. Not only will this make it easier for your teams to understand their new working situation, it will provide a consistent set of guidelines across the organisation. Writing this policy will also force your management team to consider the important issues and develop a common understanding of how they are being addressed in your company.
  3. Set acceptable professional and personal standards. These will vary from business to business, making it important to communicate clearly what is expected of your people. The realities of working from home, whether some or all of the time, mean that making it clear how much privacy is needed for calls, whether interruptions from the household are ok, the level of acceptable background noise and other factors are important to set expectations for your team members. In some cases, this might make it impossible for individuals to work from home, which enables a constructive conversation to happen before problems occur.
  4. Prepare for formal Flexible Working Requests. With over a year of working from home being a reality for many people, it may be difficult to refuse a new request, but each case should be taken on its own merits. Not all roles in your company may be genuinely possible to work flexibly in the long term.”

Alexandra summarised: “Hybrid working, hot-desking and working from home are not new. In some businesses, they have been used successfully for years already. What’s new is the volume of flexible and hybrid working arrangements, and they are new in some environments. With the right help, changes to some arrangements and focused new policies, hybrid working can bring about successful change for a better workplace.”

What final thoughts do you have as we enter this exciting phase of contact centre and customer service working?

Alexandra replied: “Recent surveys have shown us that the impact on work output has not been severe. There have been some minimal reductions in performance in some businesses, but in many cases performance has positively improved.

 She added: “If your business is going to implement permanent hybrid working policies, there are long term considerations beyond getting your set up legally and organisationally correct.”

 Alexandra continued: “Think about the long-term welfare of your staff. How is your organisation going to ensure that your team members are not over or underworked? This might be down to your managers and team leaders but should be supported by your reporting regimes.”

 She said: “How are you going to keep a successful team ethos going? This applies equally to new starters and old hands. With less social interaction inside the workplace, how will you maintain strong bonds in your business? You might need to think about more structured team events, days together inside or outside the office, team social lunches or other ideas to forge relationships and encourage idea sharing. Don’t restrict your team building to just your senior teams.”

 Alexandra concluded: “We’re already seeing that it’s possible to have a successful business using hybrid working. With a few steps taken carefully while you’re reforming your business after the Covid impact, a strong foundation can be used to build high performing teams with a common understanding and shared goals. The coming years are likely to be exciting for customer service operations who embrace the change.”

We’d like to thank Alexandra for her time and her insights. If your business is facing the challenges of making hybrid working successful, contact us.

Dr Lisa works in the commercial food safety arena, working as an expert witness for food law and practice and is regularly called upon to comment on public hygiene issues in the media. She also appears on prime-time consumer shows which have included Watchdog, Rogue Restaurants and Holiday Hit Squad in addition to many radio and TV news programmes. She has worked with Food Safety Adviser to UKHospitality and is a Trustee of the Royal Society for Public Health.

We spoke to Dr Lisa about ‘Natasha’s Law’ – a legal response to the tragic consequences of an allergic reaction. The requirement is that all food that is prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) will need to comply with new labelling rules before 1st October 2021. We talked about the new regulations and their impact on the customer service operations for food and hospitality sector businesses.

How will the new regulations change customer service for the businesses involved?

Dr Lisa explained that: “Even before the new law, food businesses needed to have accurate information on allergens so they could pass this onto customers. This needs to be absolutely up to date information about allergens in their company’s products. If the data is inaccurate, the message will be inaccurate and the consequences could be fatal.”

She continued: “Ingredients from suppliers must come from a reliable source which can supply accurate live data about ingredients.”

Where can organisations get access to this live data about what’s in the foods?

Dr Lisa explained: “Thankfully there are businesses working hard to make vital allergen information available to the industry and consumers alike. NT Assure, for example, are a company of food technologists who check data and make it available in a number of formats for food retailers, cafes and restaurants or their end customers. Away from the point of sale, an app called Glass Onion is available which aims to allow people to select places or things to eat based on their specific dietary or allergen needs.”

She continued: “It’s still imperative, though, that the allergic customer should speak to the business about their needs to makes sure the business can prepare food safely for them. This is where having the right information, systems and training available to customer-facing staff is vital.”

Dr Lisa added: “It’s reasonably easy for a business, when asked, to gather the information and pass this onto the customer about the ingredients that their suppliers have declared. However, there still needs to be a further discussion about the risks of cross-contamination during preparation and cooking, for example about whether a fryer is used for foods containing the ingredients to which they are allergic.”

She concluded: “That’s where good customer service support can really help. A common approach to communicating important and updated allergen data can ensure that the right information is given to those customers who need it, reducing the stress and training burden on front-of-house staff.”

What are the new regulations and which businesses are affected?

Dr Lisa stated that: “All food that is prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) will be required by law to have clear labelling showing all the ingredients with the 14 legally declarable allergens shown clearly (usually in bold). This now applies to foods made in-house (previously they were exempt). Many see this as a huge step in the right direction to ensuring allergic guests have detailed information in the same way as if buying a typical food at retail, but there are some potentially unforeseen consequences for many businesses who face the challenges of preparing an accurate label.”

She continued: “All restaurants are required to display signage or information on their menus to encourage allergic customers to talk to them about their needs. To my mind, this dialogue is absolutely critical, regardless of whether the customer is buying a PPDS food with a label on or a restaurant meal.”

Dr Lisa explained: “I believe that once a business knows they have a customer with a need to avoid a food, they can then take actions to prepare food specifically and safely for that customer. In many cases where there are issues or complaints, restaurants report that the customer had not made them aware of their allergy and had chosen from the menu without checking. This is something everyone needs to avoid. I think a proactive approach by the business is often the best, asking guests when they are seated if anyone has any allergies or intolerances they (the kitchen) need to know about. This helps to make the customer more at ease and prompts reluctant guests (often young adults are shy to say about their needs).”

She stated that: “If a business fails to provide food that is not as ordered or requested, then this is a legal contravention and of course could end in tragedy; for so many reasons, businesses need to get this right.”

She added: “Delivered food is exempt from labelling. This carries huge risks, for example, if verbal instructions given by the customer when ordering don’t reach the chef. There have been issues where instructions given via online systems have not been clear or communicated properly to the restaurant and this is an area that is being worked through to make improvements across the board.”

Dr Lisa points out that: “There are still possibilities for confusion, as whilst any food which is packaged prior to order could be PPDS much depends on the detail of how the food is packaged. If it is only loosely packaged, with for example an unclosed box, it may not be PPDS. Some foods in an outlet may be exactly the same but will fall into PPDS and require a label if in a sealed bag, or will not need one if on a cake stand – for instance, you might buy a bagged croissant which must have clear labelling about allergens, but a loose croissant in the same cafe does not need labels, even though it might be sitting next to the almond croissant you’re violently allergic to.”

She concluded by saying that “An area of confusion is how the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme fits into allergen confidence. Currently whilst there is a “confidence in management” element in the scheme, it is not specifically concerned with allergen management. So, a 5 Food Hygiene Rating does not necessarily mean that a restaurant or cafe is allergen safe. It is vital then, that consumers engage with the business to make sure that the food they are buying is safe for them, regardless of the Food Hygiene Rating. Allergy UK is now offering the ‘Allergy Aware’ scheme for hospitality venues but this is much less well known. The FHRS is currently under review by the FSA together with a panel of stakeholders.”

What are the main issues for food and hospitality sector businesses?

Dr Lisa responded: “Many businesses are dealing with the new legislation by trying to design out human error because providing incorrect or incomplete information at the point of sale can have serious consequences in human terms, not just failing to meet the law’s requirements.”

She explained: “For a small business, the burden of the new legislation may mean that many stop selling PPDS foods. In a restaurant or cafe, the onerous labelling requirements (which include listing ingredients by descending order of weight) will apply to them if they serve PPDS foods, but they do not have the technology and resources of a large manufacturer. They can’t write the complicated labels by hand – just look at the back of a retail sandwich and you will see why! Furthermore, working often from a small kitchen where there is naturally more risk of cross-contamination compared with a large manufacturer who has discreet lines for each food.”

Dr Lisa made it clear that: “Whilst there are 14 allergens covered by the UK labelling law, there are actually at least 160 foods that have been reported to cause an allergic reaction for some people.  A simple-looking sandwich can be a very complicated collection of potential allergens (not just the 14), and a typical kitchen cannot be realistically expected to strip down after every order is made up. Anyone claiming food is “allergen free” is deluded in my opinion – it is not possible! I would urge everyone to avoid this term completely, as I would say it is also misleading.”

She added: “Interestingly, UKHospitality found that 40% of reported allergy complaints are made by people who have not made their allergy clear in advance. PPDS law may mean less rather than more dialogue, leading to unforeseen risks.”

Dr Lisa concluded by saying that: “The new regulations place the responsibility firmly with the food business, not the consumer, but this is a partnership. To avoid problems, food businesses need to offer clear signage, labelling and pathways for consumers to ask questions about their food. Centralised customer service teams with timely access to the most up to date information can play a huge part in helping front-of-house staff and chefs to deal with enquiries from concerned customers, but above all, the data whether held locally or centrally needs to be accurate.”

How can food businesses and their customer service teams prepare for the introduction of Natasha’s Law?

Before taking your next steps to get your teams ready, consider the following suggestions from Dr Lisa. Are your leaders and staff ready to address these issues?

If your business works in the food and hospitality sector, or if you’re providing outsourced customer service for food clients, we can help you to get ready for these important new laws. Get in touch with Contact Centre Panel to discuss your next steps

At Contact Centre Panel, we have heard that question being asked with increasing frequency over the past few months, by clients using customer management outsourced service providers (OSPs), which deliver contact centre services. All business operating models have been tested and altered since the start of the Covid–19 epidemic. Customer management and contact centre frameworks and approaches are no exception and the question of whether to consolidate or diversify suppliers is frequently addressed. 

The argument for rationalisation – it’s obvious, isn’t it?

If an organisation is utilising more than one OSP to deliver or support its customer management efforts, then that alone might provide an obvious and compelling argument for consolidating this provision. 

1. Leverage scale and cost consolidation

As any procurement professional will tell you, consolidating work currently divided across a number of suppliers offers an immediate opportunity for cost savings. These can be both: 

2. Enable partnerships

If an organisation wants true partnerships with its OSP suppliers, it will find it easier if there is just one. Partnerships are always underpinned by relationships and cultural alignment and – if the client chooses carefully – these can be best identified and achieved in an exclusive supplier. In any event, using one customer management supplier will make it easier for clients to enter into an ‘outcome based’ or ‘vested outsourcing’ relationship. When a supplier has intimate knowledge of its client, its processes and customer base it can establish the confidence to contract on the basis of outcomes and outputs, not costs and inputs.  

3. Consistency and the elusive ‘Single Pane of Glass’

Most customer experience and customer management professionals regard consistency of experience as a fundamental building block and measure of customer management effectiveness. Consistency is, of course, much easier to achieve when one supplier handles all of your customers’ interactions.  

All organisations seek the elusive ‘single pane of glass’ – the ability to anticipate, observe and understand customer contact needs and experiences. To do so is typically reliant on the development of a sophisticated, integrated but flexible ‘tech stack’ of contact channels, tools and data repositories and flows. Unless an organisation has its optimal tech stack already built, ready to deploy and encompassing all customer channels and interaction modes, the challenge will be made just harder if it uses multiple customer management OSPs. 

4. Exploit internal change

The legacy use of multiple customer management providers is typically an indirect function of two features of clients’ business: 

  1. Internal divisions and silos within the client organisation which demand or tend towards requiring separate providers for separate sets of activities or segments of the total customer overall base. With separate business units or cost centres, it is natural for decision making about the use of customer management OSPs to be localised to the business unit level. 
  2. Technology or proposition differences which historically made it impractical or impossible for one supplier to meet all the client customer management needs.  

Organisational, product and proposition or technology change may make these historical decisions redundant or outmoded. The rate of business change has rocketed since the start of 2020 – correctly exploited by the business owners of customer management and customer experience, these changes can help underpin the business case for supplier rationalisation. 

The argument for diversity

So, the rationale for rationalising customer management OSPs and consolidating service provision might appear to be clear and overwhelming. However, this is not always the case. 

1. Flexibility and business continuity

In the broadest sense, Covid has underlined the need for all businesses – and all their critical functions – to be resilient in the face of challenges and interruptions. As a result of recent experiences, often – but not exclusively – to do with the relative ability of OSPs to deliver rapid, effective and secure home working, a number of Contact Centre Panel clients are actively seeking to expand their portfolio of OSPs in order to provide greater resilience and flexibility. This is a recognisable trend, especially amongst larger clients using global networks of OSPs and customer management providers. 

2. Innovation and Competition

One of the reasons to outsource customer management is to leverage and benefit from both deep functional expertise (the OSPs should be the experts) and a dedication to interacting with customers. Along with this expertise and the insight that a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ brings to any situation, newly outsourcing an activity or contracting with a new supplier can create innovation. Contact Centre Panel will always encourage clients and OSP suppliers to explore new and innovative solutions, not just outsource or change supplier for the same old approaches and techniques. Ongoing, sustained creativity and innovation is hard to achieve, but is more likely in an environment of supplier diversity and competition. 

In addition, managed competition between OSPs can allow real-world benchmarking of costs, resourcing, performance metrics and customer outcomes. 

3. Horses for courses

There are over 140 outsourced customer management providers in Contact Centre Panel’s network. They cover the widest possible variety of locations, scales and areas of specialism – from generalists to centres with very narrow, specific areas of expertise. For some organisations, the performance, experience and expertise of a niche provider will always place them ahead of a generalist OSP, which can turn its hand to any customer experience activity across a client’s whole customer base. The challenge of managing multiple providers, avoiding customer experience friction and disconnects, is unavoidable, but for many clients, it’s a price worth paying. 

Conclusion: which way to go?

Each client’s motivation for using OSPs to provide customer management services will vary. Their business and customer experience goals, history, internal structures and culture will all have a part to play. In times of challenge and change all these factors are subject to review and alteration – and that includes whether to adopt a consolidated or diversified OSP supplier approach. 

Contact Centre Panel gives clients the opportunity to review their existing OSP contracts, determine if they are best fit and secure the right approach for the on-going success of the brands customer interaction management. 

In the second of our joint ‘coffee table style’ panel discussions with Contact Centre Panel, we will be asking leading experts in contact centre outsourcing, including outsourcer representatives covering the various geographics, the key questions concerning businesses looking to outsource.

The panel will include Dino Forte, CEO, Ventrica, William Carson, Director of Market Engagement, Ascensos, Robin Hoekstra, CEO, Outworx Contact Centre, as well as our joint host and outsourcing expert Phil Kitchen, Managing Director, Contact Centre Panel.

At the end of the webinar, we’ll hold an in-depth Q&A to help you with any questions or queries you may have on the content and guide you on specific outsourcing challenge

Topic overview

Whether you’re thinking of outsourcing your contact centre or are looking for a new outsource contact centre partner, location is often a consideration. Understanding the advantages and limitations of partnering with an offshore, nearshore or onshore operation can be difficult, particularly if you don’t have the right level of knowledge and understanding. There are many factors that need to be taken into account including regulatory compliance, governance, performance, brand reputation and customer experience.

Expert panel

Dino Forte: CEO, Ventrica

Dino is Founder & CEO of fast-growth customer management outsourcer Ventrica, the partner of choice for numerous ‘blue chip’ brands. With 25 years of experience in building and operating highly successful BPO businesses, he is a customer service fanatic and lover of people and life. Dino is also a builder of teams and a contact centre technology enthusiast who is passionately and genuinely committed to his clients’ success.

Robin Hoekstra: CEO, Outworx Contact Centre

Robin is Co-Founder and CEO of South African based Outworx Contact Centre. He is both an entrepreneur and aninnovative thinker, with a wide range of business experience across GBS, ICT/Telecommunications, Online Marketing, Web Design and Software Development. Robin is also Chairman of BPeSA KwaZulu Natal.

William Carson: Director of Market Engagement at Ascensos

William is Director of Market Engagement at Ascensos, an independent customer management services provider operating in the UK and Europe. Over the past 25 years, he has worked with the world’s leading BPO outsourcers including Concentrix, Teleperformance and SITEL, as consultant and board member. William sits on the Global Sourcing Association Council and is an active member of the UKCCF and the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing.

Phil Kitchen: Managing Director, Contact Centre Panel

Phil has a deep understanding of the contact centre industry, having worked within it for over 25 years. In 2006, he jointly set up VOICE Marketing Ltd, a successful outbound contact centre, which he sold to Capita Plc in April 2015. Phil set up Contact Centre Panel the same year, to help match businesses with the right telemarketing, call or contact centre partners and then support with the onboarding process. Phil’s working mantra is to provide a ‘safe pair of hands’ – he uses his vast experience, market knowledge and deep operational understanding to consistently deliver against clients’ requirements.

Topics for discussion

Watch our previous webinar…

We are running a series of joint webinars with UKCCF on outsourcing. In the first webinar, titled ‘an introduction to outsourcing’ we hear the thoughts and experiences of seasoned industry professionals – Dave Cleaver, former Head of Operations at Centrica and Lynda Campbell, Head of Transformation BA Global Contact Centres, British Airways, and Debbie Glenister, former Head of Customer Care, Etihad Airlines, as well as our joint host and outsourcing expert Phil Kitchen, Managing Director, Contact Centre Panel.

The session will include a Q&A to help answer any questions or queries you may have and allow the panelists to provide expert advice on specific outsourcing challenges.

Topic overview

For most businesses running an in-house contact centre, without outsourced support, is not straight forward. Forecasting customer demand and flexing resources, particularly in the current climate, is an art and can be difficult for organisations that have changing needs.

Outsourcing part or all of your customer contact requirements could be the answer. It can give your business the flexibility it requires to deliver a consistently professional and efficient service. Having access to additional agents, when required, means you can easily ramp services up or down without exposing your business to additional overheads. Outsourcing is also a great way to introduce new communication channels, Automation and AI into your business, without taking on considerable capital expenditure and risk. However, identifying and onboarding the right outsourced contact centre or technology provider can be tricky though. Particularly, if you don’t have experience of outsourcing and full visibility of the market.

In this webinar, our panelists will discuss this topic sharing their in depth experiences and highlighting the do’s and don’ts of outsourcing. They will provide tips on how to get the most out of a partnership with an outsourcer.

Expert panel

Dave Cleaver: Former Head of Operations at Centrica

Dave has over 23 years experience of working as a senior operations leader for a FTSE 100 Company. He was involved with key outsourcing projects whilst Head of Operations at Centrica. Over that time, he was responsible for building customer-centric business models, developing winning leadership cultures, optimising customer service operations, implementing cost efficiencies and turning around business performance.

Lynda Campbell:Former Director of British Gas (Wales) and Head of Transformation, BA Global Contact Centres, British Airways

Lynda is the former Director for British Gas in Wales and Head of Smart Metering Customer Services and more recently the Head of Transformation for BA Global Contact Centres. The latter role involved many aspects of transforming BA Global Centres including their outsourcing strategy. She has in-depth knowledge and experience of Contact Centres and Customer Services, including working with outsourced contact centre partners.

Debbie Glenister: CX Specialist, Contact Centre Panel and former Head of Customer Care, Eithad Airlines

Debbie is an expert in contact centre operations, with extensive outsourced and insourced multi-channel customer service experience across various sectors. She has worked in senior operational leadership roles for global industry leaders and had responsibility for up to 1500 employees. Across her career she has worked for many leading brands including American Express, BMI International, Bosch, BT, Department for Work & Pensions, Disneyland Paris, EE, Etihad Airways, Microsoft, Nectar, Sky, The Daily Telegraph and Trainline.

Phil Kitchen: Managing Director, Contact Centre Panel

Phil has a deep understanding of the contact centre industry, having worked within it for over 25 years. In 2006, he jointly set up VOICE Marketing Ltd, a successful outbound contact centre, which he sold to Capita Plc in April 2015. Phil set up Contact Centre Panel the same year, to help match businesses with the right telemarketing, call or contact centre partners and then support with the onboarding process. Phil’s working mantra is to provide a ‘safe pair of hands’ – he uses his vast experience, market knowledge and deep operational understanding to consistently deliver against clients’ requirements.

Topics for discussion

  1. When and when not to outsource
  2. The key benefits of outsourcing
    Cost reduction
    Risk reduction
    Post Covid business model adjustment
    Post BREXIT business model adjustment
    Digital transformation
    How to gain alignment to existing business goals
  3. The role of technology Blended services/part outsource options
  4. Do’s and don’ts
    Challenges faced
    ​Lessons Learnt
Watch the play back…

Unicef needs call centres and volunteers on the night to help manage incoming donations from supporters by telephone, so Contact Centre Panel are going to help. In 2019, there were over 10,000 telephone donations made on the night. This is Unicef UK’s most vital source of income and will help us to raise millions of pounds to help keep even more children safe from danger in 2020.

What is Soccer Aid for Unicef?

Soccer Aid brings together two teams of celebrities and football legends for the biggest charity football match in the world, broadcast live on ITV.

What is it for?

Since 2006, Soccer Aid has raised more than £38 million for Unicef, helping it to be there for more children than any other humanitarian organisation.

Childhood should be one endless playtime. But around the world disease, hunger, conflict, poverty and disaster are disrupting play for millions of kids.

Soccer Aid for Unicef helps provide children with vaccines, clean water, education, safe spaces and protection from violence and in times of crisis so that they can grow up happy, healthy and able to play. Just like children should.

Soccer Aid 2020: how you can help

This year, Soccer Aid will return to its original home: the Theatre of Dreams at Old Trafford. The match and all the exciting build-up will be broadcast live in a multi-hour prime time weekend slot on ITV and STV, watched by millions of viewers across the nation.

On the night, viewers will be encouraged to donate to Unicef UK. That’s where you come in: we need several call centres and volunteers to manage incoming donations and help us raise millions for children all over the world.

The 2019 show peaked at 4.6 million viewers, resulting in over 10,000 calls and donations.

We are looking to our Network to join Soccer Aid for Unicef by supporting the telethon this year to raise even more.

CCP are assisting Unicef UK on a voluntary basis, so we will not be taking a fee for our work. This also applies to Network members who wish to support this worthy cause.

Appreciation Station

For the first time last we had a celebrity ‘Appreciation Station’ live from the stands of Stamford Bridge stadium. Olivia Coleman, Gemma Chan, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Warwick Davis, joined a line-up of stars who received calls from people phoning to donate. Giving Unicef UK donors a chance to speak to one of their favourite celebs drastically increased the volume of calls received and helped raise even more funds to give children everywhere a childhood full of play.

We’re bringing the Appreciation Station back for 2020, live from the stands of Old Trafford Stadium. It’s set to be even bigger and better, meaning more calls and more donations!

Interested? Find out more

To register your interest or to find out more, please contact us on either 0114 209 6120 or by email.

For more information about Soccer Aid for Unicef, go to www.socceraid.org.uk

Top Companies for Customer Service is the UK’s biggest customer service and benchmarking programme, so CCP are only too happy to help them to find and reward the very best companies out there.

A brand new award: Top Customer Service Partnership 2019

This year Top Companies for Customer Service introduces a new category to their prestigious awards, which will be presented at the Gala Dinner & Awards evening on Thursday 23rd January 2020 at the Birmingham Metropole Hilton Hotel. Entries can be submitted until Monday 2nd December 2019.

Richard Tribe, Programme Director describes the new award as “A special award to recognise the growing importance of partnerships in providing excellent customer service, between clients and key partners such as outsourced contact centres, technology providers or specialist fulfilment houses – or any other collaborative initiative between multiple parties”.
Nominees can be proposed by any part of the partnership, suggestions may be:

• A tech partner with an innovative product that has saved time and money
• An outsourcer that has taken the headache away
• A networking company that has facilitated the right match
• A charity who has helped raise awareness and in turn, helped you to help others
• A consultant who has introduced an improved and more effective way to work
• A collaboration between you and another organisation on a special project
• Any partner who has gone over and above during their alliance with you

The other award categories

Awards will also be presented to the winners of:

• Top Customer Service Agent
• Top Contact Centre ‘Special Moment’
• Hardware / Software Manufacturer of the Year

Full entry details for all award categories and a link to the entry form are here: Categories and Criteria. It’s not too early for anyone to nominate a team, individual or company!

The evening is dedicated to the ‘Top 50’ Companies for Customer Service Programme. Built on independent mystery shopping research (carried out by Ipsos Mori) and culminating in a Top 50 detailed service benchmark; awarding the 3 Top Performers within the following sectors – industry, contact centre size, channel and overall.

To get a flavour of the 2019 Gala Dinner & Awards evening, take a look at the photos here.

At Contact Centre Panel, we have built our business on helping brands, businesses and charities to choose their perfect outsourcing contact centre match. Our scientific approach and industry expertise results in long-lasting, rewarding business relationships – watch our short video to see how this works.

Phone 0114 209 6120 or email info@contactcentrepanel.com for more details today.

Are your outsourced contact centres Premier League? Ours are!

At CCP it’s our job to match people who need outsourced Contact Centres to their perfect providers. Unicef approached us earlier this year to help with their high-profile Soccer Aid charity event and we were only too proud to help.

The challenge

Unicef got in touch with CCP in April 2019 as they needed help finding call centres and volunteers to support incoming telephone donation handling for their Soccer Aid event, which took place on 16 June 2019 at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium in London and was broadcast live on ITV.

The 2018 Soccer Aid match audience peaked at 6 million viewers and resulted in a huge volume of calls and donations – the organisers were expecting even more in 2019.

The size of the job was not small! In 2018 there were almost 10,000 telephone donations made on the evening of the match, a huge volume in such a short space of time. This is Unicef UK’s most vital source of income, helping to raise the charity’s profile and contributing to the millions of pounds raised to help keep children safe from danger across the globe.

Time wasn’t on CCP’s side as we were only given a matter of days to find call centres with the right level of capacity, who were available to help and then survey them to check that their systems were compatible with BT’s platforms, as BT provided the networks for the calls. This was a huge challenge in such a short time period.

The CCP game plan

We immediately reached out to our network of 84 outsourced contact centres and to any clients with large in-house teams, to set up introductions with the Unicef team and to get the technology surveys completed.

The deadline for the technology compatibility work, to enable the call centres to be able to support the SoccerAid match, was only days away.

With our network of dependable, professional call centres, CCP were able to quickly contact and mobilise people within a very short timescale, putting them in touch with Unicef and BT to ensure that donations would be collected seamlessly and efficiently on the night.

The result – with no extra time!

We were absolutely delighted to pull this very important assignment off, with call centres being signed up and prepared in time for the event. As an extra win bonus, members of CCP’s network have already registered their interest in helping in 2020, taking the headache away from Unicef for next year’s event planning.

Although England’s team lost on penalties in 2019, CCP’s team scored and won with no extra time needed! As a result, Unicef are able to focus on their vital work of helping children throughout the world.

Unicef’s Jim Clements, Director of Soccer Aid, said “On behalf of everyone at Soccer Aid for Unicef, I want to say a massive thank you to the team at CCP for your help in securing call centres to process donations from the UK public during the Soccer Aid for Unicef 2019 match. Your hard work, determination and kindness will help to ensure that children everywhere grow up happy, healthy and able to play.”
We were delighted to have been able to help the amazing team at Unicef and support such a worthy cause.

At Contact Centre Panel, we have built our business on helping brands, businesses and charities to choose their perfect outsourcing contact centre match. Our scientific approach and industry expertise results in long-lasting, rewarding business relationships – watch our short video to see how this works.

If you’d like a free no-nonsense, no-obligation evaluation of your current Contact Centre solution, or just a quick chat about how you could improve things, contact us today:
Phone 0114 209 6120 or email info@contactcentrepanel.com today.

Unicef Soccer Aid

Soccer Aid © UNICEF/ Matas

Learn more about SoccerAid’s tremendous work defending play for every child here.

Outsourcer selection meets science

One of the reasons for founding Contact Centre Panel was our many conversations with people working at major brands who admitted honestly that they didn’t know how to find the Contact Centres to best meet their needs.

For example, Phill Connell is a consultant who works closely with The Contact Centre Panel now. In a previous life, he was given responsibility for outsourcing a major Lead Generation programme for a large energy company. With a background in business-to-business marketing, Phill’s area of expertise didn’t include choosing the best Contact Centres. At the time, CCP didn’t exist, so he had to learn very quickly!

Phill explains: “When I was selecting a Contact Centre to fix sales appointments with major energy users for our corporate sales force, I had to draw up a brief, then interview potential outsourced Contact Centres myself. Although I took it very seriously, there was a genuine risk that the brief I gave to potential suppliers wasn’t complete, or that a lack of experience would result in a bad choice.

“I like to think that my hard work paid off and we selected Contact Centres who gave us a good service, leading to three years of solid appointment-setting from our small group of outsourcers. However, I’ve absolutely no doubt that there was an element of good luck too! I strongly believe that we missed out on potentially great business partners simply because we didn’t know who the most suitable potential suppliers were. Although we knew what we needed, we had no real idea who could meet our needs until we found Contact Centres and asked them directly.

“If CCP had existed when I was looking for the best people to fix appointments for my company, I’ve no doubt that I would have used them. Removing that huge element of risk would have been an invaluable way to avoid the uncertainty we faced.”

We’re sure that many buyers of Contact Centre services can identify with this uncertainty. Whether it’s for Customer Service, Lead Generation or Outbound sales, how can buyers be expected to know which Contact Centres are a good match for their needs? That’s one of the reasons The Contact Centre Panel exists: to use our knowledge of the market to find the best Contact Centres for our Clients’ needs. One size does NOT fit all!

How does Contact Centre Panel find the right Contact Centre for your needs?

CCP work with over 110 Contact Centres, based across the UK, offshore and nearshore. This gives us unrivalled access to a huge variety of sizes, skills and suitability, enabling us to confidently identify and select the right Contact Centres to meet the exacting demands of our Clients.
Although our performance speaks for itself – over 88% of our clients extend their contractual relationships beyond the initial agreed period – here at CCP we’re constantly striving to improve the way we do business. With this in mind we’ve introduced a scientific, objective, impartial scoring method to demonstrate our requirement-led approach to helping Clients select the perfect Contact Centres for their requirements.

For a brief introduction, our short video is a great way to see what we do.

How do CCP assess potential Contact Centres?

First of all, CCP’s experts talk to the Client to establish their needs. Our extensive experience of the outsourcing sector then enables us to identify a shortlist of up to 8 potential partners, based on our in-depth knowledge of their relevant experience and skills. A detailed RFP is prepared and prospective partners are invited to respond.

Once a shortlist of interested parties has been drawn up, our CCP Scoring Matrix is employed. We engage with a number of industry experts to objectively assess each potential partner against consistent, relevant criteria to result in a scientific comparison of the different companies.
The criteria assessed are extensive, and can be grouped into six headings:

1. Alignment and solution
2. Location
3. People
4. Technology
5. Compliance and quality
6. Culture

Each heading has several questions, and each of the criteria is weighted in agreement with the Client to reflect their own preferred mix of strengths.

Why do we do this?

We apply the CCP Scoring Matrix to give clients a transparent view of the assurance that they are choosing from a small selection of Contact Centres who can meet their exacting needs and deliver a professional, compliant service. Using the CCP Scoring Matrix ensures a scientific approach to partner selection.

Although we are completely confident in our network of Contact Centre providers, every member of our network has different strengths, capabilities and relevant experience in different sectors. This scientific approach to partner selection works in the interests of both the Client and the Contact Centres and results in business relationships that deliver better results for everybody concerned.

If you would like to know more about this approach to selecting the right Contact Centre for your needs, just contact CCP today.

How can Contact Centre Panel help you?

At Contact Centre Panel, it’s our role to find the perfect match between a Client’s needs and a Contact Centre’s strengths. Ultimately all negotiations about commercial agreements are between the Client and the outsourcer, but we are able to help in a number of ways.

We’re profiling all of our Network Members to establish which of our 110+ partners can satisfy a wide-ranging series of client requirements, from commercial models to compliance, from lead generation to excellent customer service.

It is important to us that our clients are able to compare potential partners fairly. We carefully prepare our briefs to ensure that apples are compared to apples, that fair comparators are included in our brief so that results are expressed properly.

Following receipt of responses to the brief, CCP collates all potential solutions in a comparative matrix, allowing the client to compare like for like. Within this stage of the process, CCP will point out any obvious anomalies. This gives our clients the best possible information to choose their preferred Contact Centre partner, to meet their own specific needs. One size does not fit all!

If you’re not sure whether your Contact Centre is meeting your needs, talk to us here at The Contact Centre Panel for an unbiased review of your current status – just contact us by email or call 0114 209 6120 to talk about your needs. We won’t push: we will only help if you need it.

Keep In Touch

Follow CCP on LinkedIn for regular industry news and updates. It’s not all about us! Just look at our website’s News & Publications page for many more helpful articles.

To find out more about working with the perfect partner for your business, give us a call here at Contact Centre Panel on 0114 209 6120 or contact us using the form on our website.