CHALLENGE

  • A new client, a credit card provider, required support on a variety of complaints work streams including general finance, packaged finance, credit card, general banking and PPI in their Customer Services Department.
  • We were required to reduce the pipeline of circa 5,000 complaints back to within internal service levels of less than four weeks old within a timescale of eight weeks. To achieve this deadline, we were required to resource a team to deal with complaints, across all of these work streams.
  • The team would be dealing with a wide range of complaints, but mainly complex complaints that were more than 40 days old. To achieve this goal the team needed to get up to speed quickly on a wide range of the client’s products and services.
  • Our client was prepared to offer minimal I.T. systems training, but required experienced agents to be self-sufficient to minimise any further impact on the client’s business as usual operations.

ACTION

  • We provided a team of eight complaint handlers and a team manager to deal with reducing the level of complaints in the pipeline.
  • Due to the tight timescale and the wide range of products involved, the resource we deployed were experienced complaint handlers with previous financial services knowledge across retail finance products.
  • In order to align with outstanding volumes and the age of each complaint, the resource needed to be flexible and able to move between work streams with the minimum amount of training. Therefore, the team were required to be flexible with their working hours over the course of the week as daily complaints volumes dictated.
  • From the start of the engagement, we engaged the client’s operational team on-going discussions around the key resource requirements to deliver the activity. An early site visit from our sales and operational management teams gave our client further confidence and enabled a collaborative working relationship to progress.
  • Our Senior Delivery Manager regularly visited the site and engaged in weekly meetings with our client’s management team to ensure we were meeting or exceeding their expectations and to discuss any amendments they wanted to make.

RESULT

  • The resource cleared the pipeline before the end of the eight week deadline leaving our client in a stronger position than anticipated allowing them to concentrate on current work.
  • Our team of eight complaint handlers cleared approximately 1,640 of the cases over the engagement so cleared on average five cases per person per day. The volume of complaints stood at less than 750 complaints when we left which, based on the number of our client’s permanent employees, was approximately two weeks in terms of age profile.
  • Our client was delighted with our team’s performance and said that they would not hesitate to choose us as they were impressed with our collaborative approach and ultimately our quality and speed of delivery.