BPO & Public Sector Organization

Profile

Industry: Public Sector/Outsourcing contact centers  Contact centers: 6  Revenue: £3.7 billion

Business:Since 2002, this Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) has managed the contact center services that collect fees for this TV broadcast service through its customer management operation.

Challenge: To enable customer self-service via an IVR, therefore freeing up contact center agent time and improving the end-customer experience.

Solution: Self-Service IVR including identification and verification solutions, delivered via an Eckoh portal with access to all customer engagement and secure payment solutions.

Benefit

• Fewer calls routing to contact center agents
• Modern IVR
• Identification and verification to accurately direct calls
• Increased volume of calls handled via an IVR
• Choice of channels to match demand

Background

This London-based BPO is an international business process, outsourcing and professional services organization. It is a leading provider of technology-enabled business services, operating across six key markets. Since 2002 they have managed the contact center services that collect fees for this UK national broadcast company. The number of contract extensions since the start of service shows the level of success this partnership has achieved.

The service receives c.9m contacts via its telephony platform, across c.200 customer-facing contact numbers. Their contact center agents handle c.3m calls (covering £36m in payments with a 94% payment success rate) with a further c.6m calls being handled via the IVR (covering £66m in payments). Telephone contact is the second largest contact channel after their website.

Challenge

Previously, the organization's contact center agents was handling a high number of calls because their original IVR platform was not enabling them to offer as many automated applications as they'd like. At the time they could not identify and verify as many callers as they wanted to, nor identify particular types of callers/license holders because of the limited data integration available. This was causing callers to drop out of the process, leading to lower license purchases, reducing funding for the organization and delivering a poor customer experience.

With customers driving the choice of engagement channel, this position was no longer acceptable to a public-facing organization. Added to this the economic impact, as well as the poor customer experience, it became clear that change was required.

The organization therefore sought to modernize their IVR to offer more self-service options, integrate data to better identify callers & license types and route calls better so they reach the right agent or option, as well as increase the number of calls completed.

This BPO chose to work with Eckoh because of their track record of delivering transformation projects just like this. Eckoh's expertise with IVR and a portal delivery approach to customer engagement and secure payments technology made them a unique, and obvious, choice.

Solution

An IVR is simply the platform for whatever engagement applications an organization chooses - including speech, ID&V and DTMF.

Eckoh delivers more than just IVR; it allows organizations to take the solutions they need today and add new applications as it suits them. For example, we supported the organization to implement extra verification for customers over the age of 75 years.

For this organization, we delivered the customer experience portal, intelligent routing, call identification and verification as well as advanced speech self-service.

In December 2022, we also introduced ‘Know Your Customer’ identity and verification checks.

With this, the organization was able to:

• Know who was calling and get them to the right place quickly, reducing call abandonment and increasing revenue collection.
• Improve their customer experience and satisfaction by providing more self-service options as well as a better and more effective service on the customer's choice of device.
• Improve the integration of data to enhance the self-service and agent-assisted options, while reducing agent involvement in calls, so the organization is free to help those who need it the most.
• Our solution is a hosted services model and charged on a usage basis. There is no on-site equipment, no software licenses nor any ongoing maintenance and support to consider.
• This approach means that the organization can control the costs associated with the solution and only pay for the service they use. This flexibility means they can add services as they need or want, matching their business, or customer requirements.

This approach means that the organization can control the costs associated with the solution and only pay for the service they use. This flexibility means they can add services as they need or want, matching their business or customer requirements.

Value

Modernizing customer engagement: This IVR has enabled the organization to offer more self-service options, as well as complete more transactions and calls that resolve issues and collect more license fees without the need for agent interaction. Not only have they improved their contact center efficiency, but they have also collected the vital fees that continue to fund this broadcaster's programes and services.

Added value: The solution portfolio, covering customer engagement and secure payments means that the organization can always add new solutions as they need them, keeping pace with customer expectations and emerging technology.

Innovation: With Eckoh's 20+ years' experience delivering contact center technology solutions comes its track record for innovation in customer contact solutions. With Eckoh's commitment to R&D spend, the organization will be able to stay at the forefront of customer engagement.