Client challenge
Liverpool Direct Limited, the largest
public private partnership of its kind
in the UK, was established in 2001.
Originally intended to co-source selected
operations from Liverpool Council, it is 80
per cent owned by BT. Today it offers a
wide range of IT, business, and support
services to other public and private
sector clients, as well as continuing to
provide services to the city of Liverpool.
Around one third of the 1,300 people that Liverpool Direct employs are associated with its flagship contact centre. As Carl Knight, Operations Manager at Liverpool Direct Limited, explains: “The contact centre is key to our business model, taking thousands of calls each day from a variety of clients on a huge range of topics. Having real time displays communicating critical information to agents and team leaders is essential.”
Having always used wallboards to display basic performance statistics, Liverpool Direct realised that technology had moved on considerably. Carl Knight continues: “Information on our old dot matrix displays was up to 15 minutes out of date and not that helpful. We wanted a more flexible real time display solution that would show up-to-the-minute performance information, blended with other content to inform and motivate our people.”
Liverpool Direct had seen a similar real time display solution in action during reference site visits to contact centres operated by BT. It then only took a live demonstration to convince the Liverpool Direct team that TargetVision from Symon Dacon was the right answer. TargetVision enterprise video solutions offer the ultimate in flexibility, enabling the display of dynamic content to all types of audiences.
Value proposition
Prior to implementation, Symon Dacon
ran a focus group involving contact
centre agents and team leaders, as well
as company executives, to collect views
and opinions on the data to be displayed
across six LCD screens. The instant
metrics that Liverpool Direct chose
to show included numbers of callers
per queue, waiting times, percentage
abandoned calls, and customer service
levels.
Carl Knight observes: “Seeing real time data helps our agents and team leaders to react to changing call volumes to sustain excellent customer service levels.”
To get even greater value from the solution Liverpool Direct asked Symon Dacon for help with the positioning of the screens for maximum impact, and signed up for the Symon Dacon Creative Content Service. This provides the company with ongoing consultancy and assistance with screen design and layout. It also provides guidance on how video content such as daily news and weather reports – along with a Sky+ feed for live TV – can be blended with call centre data to improve staff satisfaction.
Symon Dacon also provides professional support services, including remote and on-site maintenance. Owen Dutton, ICT Project Co-ordinator at Liverpool Direct Limited, comments: “Symon Dacon is great from a support perspective. If we ever have problems, we simply call. An engineer remotely logs on to our systems to investigate, and normally clears the issue right away."
Business results
The TargetVision system has had a big
impact on Liverpool Direct. Contact
centre performance and productivity
have substantially improved. Morale is
measurably higher too, clearly confirmed
by results from staff engagement
surveys.
“We are using the screens as a motivation tool,” says Carl Knight. “For example, as well as displaying key performance data, we highlight examples of best practice and recognise 100 per cent attendance. Along with people’s birthdays and messages of the day they’ve made a massive difference to both customer service and productivity.”
Since TargetVision has been deployed,
Liverpool Direct customer service
performance has increased to
over 96 per cent of calls answered. When dealing with thousands of
enquiries each day this considerable
shift equates to a significant rise in
satisfied customers.
Such has been the success of the project that Liverpool Direct is about to extend the TargetVision deployment by adding two further screens to serve its support desks. Meanwhile, the innovative nature of the video solution is also helping Liverpool Direct Limited to win new business.
Carl Knight concludes: “We do a lot of site tours and it is important that we showcase our professional edge. The Symon Dacon screens have certainly helped us do that. It’s very impressive for visitors to be able to see exactly what is going on in real time”
E.ON Service Plus GmbH