Double award for our customer services
We’re not ones to rest on our laurels, but when our hard work is recognised we like to tell you about it.
At the recent Contact Centre Forum Awards, we had winners in both the Manager of the Year, and Complaints Team of the Year categories.
Victorious Manager Diane Hewitt, who was only appointed in January, believes her win was testament to the principle of “getting the right people in to the business: people who are flexible, agile and will dig deep to get the job done to get the best possible outcome for our customers.”
As part of her “very steep learning curve”, Diane and her contact centre team coped with the migration of around 300,000 policies acquired from HSBC. In any year this would have required a considerable amount of work to incorporate successfully.
2015 however, has definitely not been a normal year in the world of pensions. New rules introduced in April allowed pension customers to access their pension savings as and when they wanted to, from the age of 55.
Senior Complaints Manager, Richard Ellis, thinks adapting to this change was key to his team’s success: “The award is a ringing endorsement of our ability to cope with last minute ‘generation-defining’ regulatory changes and demonstrates we have great people, who provide a fabulous service to our customers.”
As well as the HSBC migration and changes to pension rules, company staff have embraced the introduction of a new product– the Retirement Account – designed to allow customers to take full advantage of the new rules. They’ve also had to familiarise themselves with an entirely new process for customers approaching retirement, including a tool which allows customers to compare their options.
Adapting to all these elements has required a huge amount of planning, training and testing to make sure our customer service isn’t adversely affected. We think we’ve managed to do this pretty well and the figures appear to back us up, as explained by Richard: “Complaints are a reflection of a company’s customer service.
“Our Regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has reported the industry experienced a noticeable increase in pension complaints over the period the new rules came into effect. We compared very favourably, and in fact, experienced a reduction in complaints over the first half of 2015, compared to the first half of 2014.”
While we would never claim to be perfect, we always try to do our very best for the customer, and when we don’t, we do something about it. That’s why we’re always keen to know what you think, as Diane says: “This is the customers telling us what they want and need. And we’re listening! Many initiatives come out of customer satisfaction feedback.”
List of awards and nominations 2015:
- Manager of the Year winner – Diane Hewitt
- Complaints Team of the Year winner – Service Resolution Team
- Call Centre of the Year runner-up – Service 1st Team, Telford
- Industry Newcomer of the Year runner-up – Kelly Cooper
