Winners of the Customer Contact Innovation Awards 2012

Seven winners gained innovation awards for outstanding initiatives that put the customer at the heart of the solution to drive performance improvement.  The overall winner was DRL, with individual awards taken by BT Retail, Direct Line Group, Motability Operations, nPower, Scottish Widows and Transform Sandwell.

Organised by the Professional Planning Forum, these sought-after awards celebrate and benchmark excellence in the industry. The year’s winners showcase innovations that integrate technology, process improvement and cultural change, to demonstrate an exciting level of creativity in a difficult time for investment and change.

DRL (pictured above) was presented with the overall 2012 Customer Contact Innovation Award for the highly successful innovation that made it easy for customers to buy appliances online, reducing contacts per order by a massive 29% through listening to customers and acting on this insight. They also won the Innovation Award for Customer Experience.

“What we do is engage customers before their purchase and after. It’s about making the journey more streamlined,” explained Andrew Kirkcaldy, Marketing Director for DRL. “Engagement is massive,” added David Atherton, Contact Centre Manager.

DRL (Appliances Online), implemented “Best Service is No Service” methodology, cutting cost to serve by 10% and raising customer satisfaction to new heights, with a fantastic 86% NPS. This joined-up approach of sales and service gives them great agility and enables call handlers to understand the root cause of customer problems and fix them. An incredibly strong company culture is underpinned by key core values. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are used to understand customer issues, resolve problems, celebrate success and establish a community. With an exceptional 98% “Deliver to Promise”, this organisation truly puts the customer at the heart of their operation.

“This is an exceptional achievement” says Steve Woosey, Chief Executive of the Professional Planning Forum. “DRL have a culture where everybody is looking to improve the service that they offer to the customer, and customers themselves have the opportunity to make suggestions through social media. What’s more, they are fantastically innovative in resolving these issues. Any contact centre professional serious about delivering for the customer could learn something from this approach.”

The winners were selected by a team which included 17 experienced industry practitioners, many of them previous winners or finalists. Judges visited each of the 19 shortlisted organisations, and then assessed them against a strict set of criteria. “Every year judging visits exceed our expectations.  It is always exciting to see how the customer contact industry is developing so rapidly. Each year we see new innovations that challenge the way organisations work, with impact reaching well beyond the contact centre,” comments Paul Smedley, Chair and Founder of the Professional Planning Forum.

Seven further awards recognised innovation in specific areas:

The Innovation Award for Social Media Innovation was awarded to BT Retail. They grew social media traffic by 500%, fusing it into existing channels and reporting systems, to achieve the highest customer effort score for any communication channel.

The Innovation Award for Resource Planning was won by Direct Line Group for transforming planning through people. Their continuous improvement methods drove change in the mindset and behaviours of the resource and planning team at Direct Line, transforming processes and saving cost.

The Innovation Award for Service Transformation was gained by Motability Operations, where insight and collaboration transformed service.  A focus on the customer helped support teams open new approaches to call analysis, forecasting and MI that managed volatile demand and raised satisfaction.

The Innovation Award for Integrated Planning was secured by nPower, who transformed performance and improved customer experience by harnessing the power of planning, quality and MI and using insight from new sources like speech analytics.

The Innovation Award for Customer Focus was presented to Scottish Widows. More and consistently better conversations, together with fundamentally improved resource planning, have kept customers loyal and increased customer retention value by 300%.

The Public Service Innovation Award was won by Transform Sandwell. They have demonstrated how going above and beyond traditional corporate social responsibility can play a major role in achieving business success and real efficiency. All employees participate in community activities and customer services trains and employs people from some of the borough’s most excluded communities.

Planning Forum Hero Awards were presented to five outstanding customer contact professionals, recognising their exceptional personal contribution in developing the role of planning. The 2012 Heroes are Peter Doak, Resource Planner at Concentrix, Tim McKeegan, Performance Manager at Belron UK, Anita Yandell-Jones, Performance Manager at DAS, Tracy Johnson, Operational Planning Lead Retail Sales and Service at RSA and Julie Warne, Head of Reservations at Carnival UK.

Every year, the Planning Forum produces case studies, for all organisations on the Innovation Awards shortlist, and organises facilitated site visits to meet with winners and finalists – the idea being to provide its members with examples of best practice from some of Europe’s most innovative customer contact operations. Previous winners have included Autoglass, Scottish Power, QVC, EDF Energy, Salford City Council, Tesco, HBOS and Norwich Union.