Aptean Respond eBook: Achieving Customer Service Excellence (EN-GB)

Introduction

Customers are the lifeblood of your business, and it should be your top priority to make sure that you are consistently providing a high level of customer service. A purpose built complaint and case management solution can help to support you on this journey. Not only does it help you to more effectively manage your complaints and feedback, but it lets your customers know that you take their complaints and feedback as seriously as they do.

In this booklet, you will learn about the success organisations like yours have had when using Aptean Respond for their complaint and case management. With challenges ranging from unifying complaint processes to meeting new industry regulations, you are certain to gain critical insights from these customer success stories.

Ready for a World-Class Complaints Management System

Aptean Respond is the market leading case and complaints management platform that supports every role in your customer experience team – from contact centre staff and customer service teams to team leaders and executives.

Through configurable workflows and user-friendly dashboards, Respond empowers your team to improve customer interactions,

case resolution, and capture actionable insights to

customer experience.

MotoNovo

Challenges

MotoNovo Achieves Complaint Management Excellence with Aptean Respond

MotoNovo Finance is one of the largest lenders in the UK used car finance market. With a customer base of 500,000 customers, MotoNovo is part of the Aldermore Banking Group and offers a range of finance products, from Hire Purchase (HP) and Personal Contract Purchase (PCP), to digital products such as MotoClick and Quote and Propose to dealers.

The Challenge

Maria Vidler, head of MotoNovo’s complaints function, realised that the businesses’ complaint handling process was fragmented. There were several teams, all using their own processes and procedures. These issues were reflected in the high volume of complaints that were referred to and upheld by the FOS, with over 10% of complaints referred and a monthly uphold rate of between 45%-80%. Additionally, 26% of complaints went over the eight-week resolution timeframe as mandated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

» Disparate complaint management functions across the organisation

» Business wasn’t recognising and recording all complaints

» Over 10% of complaints referred to the FOS

» 26% of complaints exceeded the FCA’s 8-week timeframe

Benefts

» FOS referral rate down from 10% to 2%

» 26% of complaints get resolved at first point of contact

» Complaints not resolved within 56-day timeframe down from 26% to 1%

Solution

After some internal departmental adjustments, MotoNovo chose to implement Aptean Respond as its dedicated complaint management platform across the entire business, due to its advanced functionality and ability to offer an end-to-end, business-wide complaint management solution.

Maria explains: “Aptean Respond allowed us to bring a commonality to processes and procedures that simply hadn’t existed before, replacing cumbersome and inefficient spreadsheets. We use it to log each and every customer complaint coming into the business, putting the necessary workflows in place to trigger the most appropriate course of action to expedite a successful complaint resolution, supported by accurate and timely customer communication. It also gives us a single version of the truth, with all customer information available in a single location, reflecting every customer interaction relevant to a particular case.”

“The quality and quantity of management information keeps us one step ahead when it comes to identifying any looming issues too, highlighting any complaints on the cusp of exceeding the eight-week timeframe and pinpointing any systemic issues that can be addressed before they become problems.”

The success of the transformation hasn’t gone unnoticed externally either and MotoNovo was the recipient of three awards at the 2021 UK Complaint Handling Awards including the prestigious Overall Winner Award.

“Implementing Aptean Respond was a pivotal moment for MotoNovo, as it provided us with the technology we needed to make our customer experience a competitive advantage. It’s empowered us with new capabilities, helping us on our journey to guarantee complaint handling excellence for each and every customers.”

Maria Vidler, MotoNovo

Close Brothers Heads to the Cloud for Complaint Management

Excellence

Close Brothers is a leading UK merchant banking group providing lending, deposit taking, wealth management services and securities trading. Employing over 3,500 people, principally in the UK, Close Brothers Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 250.

The Challenge

An internal review by six businesses of Close Brothers, led them to reassess how they handled complaints . The businesses were all using Aptean Respond to manage complaints, albeit an old version of the solution, which meant that the team couldn’t easily adapt in-line with the changing nature of complaints. Additionally, they discovered some Quality Assurance (QA) process challenges.

Keeleigh Field, Retail Business Manager at Close Brothers, explains: “We recognised a lack of standardisation across business units, meaning it was difficult to secure a single view of complaint handling…We were also very aware that we weren’t using the system to its full potential, and were keen to attain efficiencies, enhance root cause analysis and enable continuous improvement.”

Challenges

Benefts

» Real time reporting and contextual QA with increased automation

» Configuration flexibility

» Savings from a switch to SaaS

» Needed to adapt to changing nature of complaints

» QA challenges stemmed from using manual spreadsheets

Solution

The business wanted to ensure it had the latest, most efficient system in place, not only in terms of complaint logging, but achieving satisfactory resolutions too, which would reduce the number of complaints referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). Real-time, contextual QA was a particular priority, as well as business unit specific configuration capabilities and an increase in automation. To address these needs Close Brothers upgraded to Aptean Respond 8.0 making full use of its integrated QA functionality and configuration flexibility. They also moved to the cloud from on-premise having recognised the cost and efficiency savings to be made through a cloud approach.

Close Brothers put in place a variety of quantitative measurements to compare pre- and post-project in order to gauge the success of the upgrade. These included: the logging time of complaints, the number of complaints referred to the FOS, system management costs and the frequency of QA checks. The business also wanted to achieve a real improvement in the quality of the data it collected, something that would be assessed through improved QA processes.

The system upgrade to Aptean Respond 8.0 was a success, with Close Brothers working in partnership with Aptean to enhance the system configuration and leverage Aptean Respond’s API capability. The move to the cloud proved financially beneficial for Close Brothers too. The business has saved £75,000 by upgrading to the SaaS version of Aptean Respond. This also ensures Close Brothers has the most up-to-date version of the software and modules, with frequent upgrades and updates carried out remotely by Aptean, meaning minimal disruption to the business.

“It was very much a team effort from the outset. The Close Brothers and Aptean teams worked together to ensure goals were aligned and key deliverables met, and the experience and expertise of the Aptean team was invaluable, ensuring a robust system was delivered, tailored to meet our specific business needs.”

Keeleigh Field, Retail Business Manager at Close Brothers

Ardonagh Group

Ardonagh Group Optimises Complaint Management with Aptean Respond

Formed in 2017, The Ardonagh Group is the UK’s largest independent insurance broker with global reach, powered by a workforce of over 7,000 operating out of 100 locations across the UK and Ireland. Three of the Group’s market-leading businesses joined forces in 2019 to form the Atlanta Group, comprising Swinton, Carole Nash and Autonet.

The Challenge

Swinton was using Aptean Respond for complaint management, having transformed its complaints management process in 2017. Autonet was using a different complaint management system and Carole Nash was using an in-house system, which didn’t have the same abilities in reporting, MI and data interrogation.

Carol Banks, Head of Complaints for the Atlanta Group, states “We identified a number of areas for improvement. Most pressing was the fragmented reporting tools across all three businesses, which meant we couldn’t directly compare our data, making it difficult to identify any trends or issues throughout the group. The complaint categories we were using weren’t the same, and the way each business was recording complaints was completely different too. To do any sort of root cause analysis was labour intensive and time consuming”

Challenges

» Multiple complaints management systems/ processes

» No unified reporting

» Seasonal variations in complaint volumes Benefts

» A unified complaints handling system creating a customercentric approach

» Improved complaint capture with enhanced reporting & data interrogation

» Quick and easy root cause analysis to support informed business decisions

Solution

After the project went out to bid, Aptean Respond was chosen as the best fit for a number of reasons. As Carol told us: “We obviously had a very positive experience of Aptean Respond with Swinton, having seen tangible improvements to complaint management there, which gave us confidence in the system’s ability. Aside from this, we were all very impressed by Aptean’s commitment to future-proofing the solution, with a clear roadmap in place, which made it clear from the outset that Aptean would work alongside us in solution development.”

The solution’s functionality and ease-of-use were two further factors in the decision, delivering the right set of tools and the system flexibility to meet the various needs of the different businesses within the Group.

The Atlanta Group businesses have already been reaping the benefits of the new groupwide solution, achieving increased levels of efficiency, consistency and complaint management excellence across the Group.

Respond has uncovered new levels of insight for The Ardonagh Group, greatly enhancing capabilities with regards to reporting and data interrogation in particular. With Respond at the heart of the complaint management function right across The Ardonagh Group, Carol is confident this provides the business with the opportunity to realise significant business improvements.

“Choosing Respond as our group-wide complaint management platform has optimised our operations, providing in-depth insight into our complaints data, which we can use to evolve our business. This capability, in combination with our ongoing commitment to customer service excellence, will ensure we maintain our competitive advantage while exceeding the ever-changing expectations of our customers.”

Carol Banks, Head of Complaints for the Atlanta Group

LV= Reduces Open Formal Complaint Volumes by 40%with Aptean Respond

LV= is a mutual protection, savings and retirement provider whose roots go back to 1843. Now it provides a range of financial solutions to 1.3 million customers and members in the UK.

The Challenge

Back in 1996, LV= was using a ledger to record complaints, with all complaints manually logged and updated. This process was fast becoming unfit-for-purpose as customer numbers increased and as society in general became more heavily digitised.

Jenny Briars, Head of Customer Complaints, explains “At the moment, our team is kept busy dealing with not just complaints, but PPI requests and GDPR information requests, too. Regardless of the scope or volumes we’re faced with, our priority is always to secure the right outcome for the customer.”

Challenges

» Efficient complaint management

» GDPR information requests

» MI reporting and collating customer feedback

Benefts

» A single solution for multiple processes

» 40% reduction in open complaint volumes

» Flexible, accessible and in-depth reporting

» Streamlines complaint resolution

» Enhanced customer experience

Solution

After a thorough assessment of the market, the business implemented Aptean’s case and complaints management solution, Aptean Respond. As Jenny remembers, “Aptean Respond revolutionised how we dealt with complaints, securing real efficiencies for us in terms of how we managed the entire process.”

LV= uses Respond because of its ability to support the entire complaints management process in a single solution. Through giving front-line staff access to key information as well as the ability to update information directly in the system, it reduces any duplication of effort and streamlines complaint resolution for an enhanced customer experience.

LV= has used Aptean Respond to underpin a new team that’s been set up within the complaints team, responsible for the immediate escalation of urgent complaints and customers in vulnerable situations. Tasked with investigating the customer’s situation and securing the right outcome within 24 hours, the effect that this new process has had on the business has been fundamental.

“Respond lies at the very heart of our complaints management function, giving us the ways and means to successfully manage the whole process. The ease of access to the right information at the right time is the key to its success. We’ve used the solution for over 23 years and I can’t see that changing any time soon.”

Jenny Briars, Head of Complaints

AXA Insurance Saves $2 Million with Aptean Respond

Within financial markets, AXA is positioned as a global leader in financial protection with 103 million clients worldwide and 161,000 employees. In the UK, AXA Insurance employs a workforce in the thousands and its main lines of business are auto, home, travel and commercial insurance products which are sold to individuals and corporate customers alike.

The Challenge

The company has always been strong in the field of customer support, understanding that listening to customers through their feedback will ultimately deliver many benefits to the organisation. In order to automate and improve the complaints and feedback process, AXA implemented Respond’s complaints and feedback management system across the organisation to capture complaints and general feedback at all the customer facing points. AXA wanted to maximise the use of the system and use the feedback data for the operational benefit of the company.

Challenges

» Approximately 1,200 complaints per month

» Needed reliable system to manage customer feedback

Benefts

» Turnaround time for acknowledgement of complaints down to 24 hours

» Process improvements identified, resulting in $2 million savings to the business

» 2% increase in customer satisfaction within the first year

Solution

Aptean Respond, the market-leading complaints and feedback management application, was installed and used to improve and accelerate AXA’s ability to proactively manage its customer feedback, with the application also providing performance management data for reporting purposes. Around the business, particularly the call centers, 650 users were given access to Respond’s browser-based application and responsibility for capturing and logging complaint and feedback information at the front-line. Due to the intuitive and user-friendly nature of the Respond software, training could be done in one hit and the system rolled out quickly and effectively.

AXA also uses the Respond system to produce reports in order to identify trends, risk and potential cost saving process improvements. This information enables AXA to identify problems, put corrective actions in place and monitor the impact of these changes, providing an immediate benefit to the organisation.

Process improvements identified through analysis of data captured by the Respond system resulted in a $2 million saving to the business within a one year period. For example, within its Auto Engineering Service, analysis of the Respond data identified trends and enabled process changes which removed three days from the average turnaround time of a vehicle going in and leaving the repair shop. Changes such as this have a major cost saving implication to AXA as well as providing the customer with a better experience of dealing with the organisation.

“The Aptean Respond product suite has improved the capture of complaints and feedback around the organisation. We now have a better picture of issues and can monitor precisely how we are capturing the information and how we are performing in response times.”

AXA Insurance

Are You Ready to Learn More?

To learn more about Aptean Respond, contact us at respond-enquiries@aptean.com or visit www.apteanrespond.com.

Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of purpose-built, industry-specific software that helps manufacturers and distributors effectively run and grow their businesses. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes to be Ready for What’s Next, Now®. Aptean is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To learn more about Aptean and the markets we serve, visit www.aptean.com.

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