Keeping the customer close to the heart PROJECT SPONSORS
Keeping the customer close to the heart Written by Dale Benton Produced by Danielle Harris
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PLUSNET HAS CONTINUED TO DELIVER CUSTOMER FOCUSED SERVICE OFFERINGS. FOLLOWING AN AWARD WINNING 2016 AND WITH AN EXPANDED PORTFOLIO, THE COMPANY LOOKS SET TO REACH NEW HEIGHTS.
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lusnet has a simple goal: to think and act differently from other communications providers, to save customers money and to provide unrivalled customer service. It’s unsurprising then that the company brand promise of “We’ll do you proud” is at the forefront of its business strategy. Coming off the back of an extremely successful 2016, including an impressive 21 award wins and the launch of Plusnet Mobile which firmly established the provider as a quadplay contender, David Leather, Chief Operating Officer at Plusnet, is keen for the company to continue momentum. “The last year has been really strong for Plusnet and the launch of Plusnet Mobile was a particular highlight for the whole company,” he says. “I’m eager that we continue to push ahead and achieve even more this year.” For Leather and Plusnet, the
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company must continue to scale and develop its offering in order to continue to meet and exceed the demands of its customers.
Astronomical change The challenge for Leather lies in that development. “Customer expectations have changed astronomically with regards to product performance, the usage of those products and what customers expect in relation to the money they are spending,” he says. “As an industry, we have a long way to go to match those expectations, and I think the danger for us is that that is where the benchmark is.” Leather believes that the needs of the customer should form the basis of any improvements the company makes and is part of the company’s strategy for scaling its services and capabilities. “Being a smaller company
Plusnet is headquartered in Sheffield, UK w w w. p l u s . n e t
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FROM STRATEGY TO EXECUTION: DRIVING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION WITH PLUSNET It’s really important that we build strong partnerships with our suppliers who are as passionate about customer experience as we are. Working with Virtusa we have a partner who thinks the same way, starting with the customer intent and working back from that point” David Leather COO, Plusnet
Our business relationship with Plusnet goes back 10 years. Since then, we have worked on significant programmes of work to streamline operations and optimise costs in areas such as Network Assurance and White Labelling Platforms. Our expertise in working with our customers to create streamlined platforms with reduced complexity and cost of operations has been a cornerstone of our work together.
In 2015, our Pegasystems practice started working with Plusnet to transform the way billing systems were operating. That work focussed on providing a superior user experience for both customers and customer services agents. Since then, our teams have worked on automating provisioning and building a world class model for helping Plusnet customers when they have a service problem. Using the Pegasystems platform, we created a seamless multi-channel journey where customers would, by responding to questions about their problem, trigger sophisticated diagnostic tooling at BT Wholesale in real time to rapidly resolve faults. Meeting the business need to manage and change both the digital assets and the diagnostic journey without IT support was also straight forward using the Pega platform. More recently, our teams have engaged on strategic innovation projects such as the end to end customer experience re-design and a simplified CRM system to enable customer services teams to focus on customer engagement, providing even better service more quickly. At the heart of the working relationship between the two companies is the recognition that competency already exists in Plusnet to carry out many improvement projects. Those skills and competencies need support and growth during business improvement initiatives and so teams are frequently formed from Virtusa, blended with core business and technology functions at Plusnet. There is an uncompromising and determined culture at Plusnet to do the very best for all their customers and to embrace contact, that culture is shared and visible right from the top of the organisation. We are all proud to work with a multi award winning brand to relentlessly deliver the best possible customer service.
Learn how Virtusa can help transform your business at: www.virtusa.com
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Keeping customers happy means being proactive. Pega empowers you to transform the customer experience – reducing churn, increasing lifetime value and maximising satisfaction every step of the way.
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makes you think differently in order to compete with big corporate businesses,” he adds.
Customer centric Despite its successes, totalling 21 awards throughout 2016, Plusnet is very much undergoing a journey about understanding and continuing to put the customer at the forefront of everything it does. In order to grow in line with customer demand, the company invests heavily in research insights, sentiment analysis and customer feedback. Leather wants to understand what the customer is actually saying about the company. “In my view, customer experience is a feeling. It’s hard to measure and not just a number,” he says. Plusnet is on a mission to redefine its customer service and ask one simple question: is that in the best interest of the customer? “Contact is not a bad thing. It’s an opportunity for us to fix things and better serve our customers,” he says. “If they want to contact us, then let’s make it as easy as possible for them. Why make it harder?” It is through this approach that Plusnet works to three main principles of customer management.
The need to get personal In order to better serve customers, Plusnet must understand who they are, what products they have and what events are happening within their lifecycle with the company.
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“There’s a balance to be had in keeping customer validation both secure yet simple. People don’t want to jump through hoop after hoop in order for us to help understand their problem however we also need to keep our customer data protected as an absolute priority,” adds Leather. Technology will play a major role in this situation, with Plusnet using information and technology to make
information to video self-help information. Mobile and the customer is a transformation that will only continue to get bigger,” he comments.
On your time A major challenge with customer service has been the inability to separate a customer in need of immediate support from a customer who is just making an
“Mobile and the customer is a transformation that will only continue to get bigger” decisions quickly and to provide better support to the customer.
On the move The second principle is the response to the proliferation of mobile and smart phones. Leather admits that Plusnet must recognise that the way to get through to this generation of customer is through mobile. “It could be everything from rendering web pages, simplified
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enquiry. Ultimately, both customer types will need to queue for the same amount of time. “This isn’t consistent with the way we operate in everyday life. We require information on the move, so why should we make people pause everything to obtain the information they need?” he says. The three principles of customer management represent the customerfirst nature of Plusnet. It all serves to
With the power of true partnership, Capita helps Plusnet brings its customer promise to life. Phil Hoggarth, Director of Divisional Trading Capita Customer Management
Capita Customer Management has had a strong presence in the telecoms customer service market for more than four decades, and so our growing relationship with Plusnet could be seen as relatively young. But what began in 2015 as a short-term contract to help deliver customer service agents at a time of growth for Plusnet has rapidly evolved into a true transformational partnership. Growing to around 100 insourced customer service agents, Capita’s focus has been to help enhance and transform Plusnet’s customer experience and the results have been speaking for themselves. In fact, the team at Capita have been continuously exceeding benchmark targets set by Plusnet by 15-30%. This ‘champion challenger’ model has proved hugely successful in unifying staff and ensuring customers are getting an enhanced service. Crucially, we aim for real integration with our clients’ teams, so there is no operational difference between a Capita agent and their Plusnet colleagues. All the agents work to the same targets and KPIs – set by Plusnet – and we use the same communications, incentivisation and management across all contact centre staff. There can often be a worry that insourcing can result in a ‘them and us’ culture among staff – Capita works hard with all its customers to ensure that this doesn’t happen.
“Collaboration and communication are key to Capita’s partnership with Plusnet. We are not reinventing the wheel, but getting more of the basics right, and we are always talking with the client to ensure the insourced team is an extension of their own team”, says Capita’s Director of Divisional Trading – Phil Hoggarth. “We have placed a great deal of value on engagement at all levels of the partnership, from the agents up, and we regularly share feedback and best practice across all aspects of the transformation,” “Not only are we now in a position where Plusnet trusts Capita with their customers, we are working with Plusnet to leverage Capita’s extensive experience and depth of capabilities in customer management solutions to drive better customer interactions.” “We do this by bringing our best practice to the partnership on how best to design and build and deploy optimal digital communications channels including mobile applications, social media, and webchat amongst others.” Plusnet will undoubtedly continue to build on the growth it has experienced over the past 12 months and Capita is excited to be working handin-hand with our client to ensure that together, we deliver best-in-class service for both new and existing customers.
Learn more about how we could support your transformational journey at www.capitacustomermanagement.co.uk
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one single philosophy; how can the company make it easier for the customer to get the service they need?
Plusnet Mobile With the launch of Plusnet Mobile in November 2016, the company made the move into becoming a full-service quad-play provider. Plusnet Mobile has built on the company’s ongoing commitment to offer customers great value deals without compromising on the excellent service the brand is famous for. The Plusnet Mobile network offers a range of tariffs, combining generous data, minutes and text bundles at great prices. “Customers have responded incredibly well to our latest offering proving that there is definitely an appetite for it,” Leather expanded.
Future foundations Over the last 12 months, Plusnet has gone from strength to strength and while Leather admits that there is still a large amount of work ahead for the company, he fully believes that Plusnet stands in the perfect position to continue to deliver market leading service to its customers. “Right now, I feel Plusnet stands at the forefront of innovatively thinking as to how we support customers. We are very much focused around customer expectation and customer need,” he says. “I hope we will continue to be recognised as number one in our industry for customer experience and service, but also recognised on a wider industry forum for our offering.” w w w. p l u s . n e t
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