Case Study: PureGym Transforms Its Contact Centre With Genesys

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Challenge
Founded in 2008, PureGym Group holds market-leading positions across the UK, Denmark and Switzerland, with recent entries into the US, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Unlike traditional fitness centres, its disruptive customer-centric proposition is based around affordable membership fees (achieved through minimum staffing and unmanaged receptions), no fixed-term contracts and 24/7 access to most of its high-quality gyms.
However, rapid business growth came with a penalty. The company’s contact centre in Leeds was predominately call-based and soon became stretched.
In addition, agents were slowed down and couldn’t perform at their best because of different systems, such as Mitel on-premises telephony, Citrix virtual desktops and multiple third-party apps.
“We weren’t able to connect previous member interactions, or accurately plan and schedule resources,” said Michelle Kaye, Head of Member Services at PureGym. “And it was virtually impossible to upgrade our IT due to continuous 24-hour operations.”
Solution
Like most gyms, peak demand occurs from new joiners every January (New Year fitness regimens) and September (when people return to work or study). To keep pace, PureGym would recruit temps for up to three months, which was hugely expensive. Increased demand also inevitably impacted customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) by creating longer wait times, frustrated customers and abandoned contacts. With ambitious business growth plans over the next few years – and realizing a recruitment-heavy contact centre model would be unsustainable – PureGym set about transforming its operating model. “We’d launched digital initiatives before, but they hadn’t been widely adopted by our members,” added Kaye. “So, our goal was to move to a more proactive, digital-first approach to stem rising operational costs without compromising service levels.” The first step was retiring on-prem systems and moving to an all-in-one, cloud contact centre platform. Following an extensive tender, the company chose a proposal from Kerv Experience and Genesys. “Kerv Experience showed us how easy the solution was to use and to turn on new omnichannel features, AI automations and workforce management tools,” said Scott Adams, Member Services Manager for PureGym. “And, with Genesys, we also got the advantage of pre-built integrations and AppFoundry add-ons.” The project was executed in four workstreams to enable channel migration and remote working: ensuring seamless experience for members and employees; creating a knowledge library; introducing a chatbot to alleviate advisors of repetitive tasks; and developing internal apps and tools to enhance service. Guided and supported by Kerv specialists, PureGym had a smooth migration with virtually zero disruption. Several months later, it’s reaping the benefits. “Our contact centre is now 100 percent digital,” said Adams. “As well as increasing self-service and deflection rates, we’re able to take advantage of automation opportunities that we simply never had before. And we no longer have the cost or logistical headache of call management.” Front of house is an online members area supported by a 40-member customer service team. They efficiently manage email, chat and social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) interactions from a single unified desktop. Asynchronous Genesys Web Messaging was recently added, enabling international members in different time zones to start a conversation and return to it.Results
- 4% decrease in contacts requiring agent assistance
- 300% increase in call deflection and auto handling
- 15% reduction in advisor hours
- 18% increase in hourly contacts handled per agent
- CSAT scores consistently above 4 out of 5
This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Genesys – View the Original Article
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Author: Genesys
Published On: 6th Aug 2024
Read more about - Industry News, Case Studies, Genesys