Vax Cleans Up Its Customer Experience Services With Vonage Contact Center

Customer experience is a top priority for Vax. True to its innovative products, Vax uses the latest in cloud technology from Vonage to achieve amazing results in its customer contact center:

• First contact resolution has risen from 78% to an industry-leading 87%
• Efficiency has escalated, with headcount falling from 97 to 84 while handling the same number of contacts
• Employee satisfaction in the contact center has rocketed from being the lowest ranking department in the organization to the highest
• Average call handling time has been reduced by 20 seconds
• Number of calls per advisor increased from an average of six calls per hour to eight calls per hour

How has Carole Edwards, Head of Customer Contact, managed this change? It has been no mean feat; when Carole joined Vax from Vodafone, she says, 'what I found had no resemblance to a customer contact center. The customer experience was poor and conflicted with our company values where the customer is at the heart of our business. The technology was not fit for purpose and the team were not empowered to make the right decisions for our customer'. Wanting to start afresh, Carole prepared a plan for transformation. 

Upgrading Contact Center Processes, People Development, and Engagement

Carole’s new team started by fixing process issues, analyzing why customers were calling and how they were being handled. New workflows were quickly put in place, and 100 advisors were given powers to resolve problems for customers. This helped to reverse the low levels of employee engagement. By redesigning job roles, creating new personal performance development (PDP) plans and incentivizing the right behaviors, the team began to feel good about coming to work.

Setting new objectives for the contact center, aligned with a new set of measures for the balanced scorecard, meant that for the first time advisors knew what to do and could judge their progress on that journey. Soon after this was achieved, Carole realized that advisors’ ability to deliver fantastic customer experience was hampered by archaic call center technology. 'If a customer called five times in a day, we would ask them who they were on each occasion. ... We didn’t know our customers. We couldn’t improve handling times; customers had to repeat themselves. Our advisors were now highly motivated to do the right thing for customers, but the technology didn’t support the team'.

Deploying Vonage Cloud Contact Center Technology

Carole says it was important to build a business case, however influencing the business to invest in new technology was not easy. They had many questions. What were the benefits in terms of improved customer retention? What costs savings would there be? What could Carole promise? The great news was the Board agreed to the change and with a brief of what was needed, Carole visited Call Center Expo ready to buy: 'We looked at the stands other people were visiting, saw what was generating interest, and quickly spotted the appeal of Vonage Contact Center'. 

Vonage provided consultancy advice during the fast implementation. It was critical to get this right, as Vax was due to move offices within months. The cloud contact center solution from Vonage needed to work seamlessly on both old and new sites. Carole was meticulous in planning the transition period, providing regular face to face updates for all the advisors and putting posters on the walls explaining the imminent changes as well as making training with Q&A sessions available. The results — a revolutionised contact center for Vax.

Since the successful implementation, Vonage has delivered huge upturns in both experience and efficiency for Vax:

Optimized call routing. The Universal Call Distributor (UCD) links to Salesforce and ensures the best possible routing for customers when they call. Using CLID to identify customers and make intelligent routing decisions based on whether a case exists, or if it is an escalated call and the customer has made a previous complaint. The IVR can be bypassed; for example if the caller phones back within 5 weeks they will get the same agent as previously, to help the customer from unnecessarily repeating information. Equally, if the caller gave a low NPS on a previous call, they will be routed to a special Advocate Advisor.

Better and more personalized customer service.  Thanks to a 360-degree customer view, advisors can immediately gain insight into a customer’s previous purchases, issues, activities or social presence, and respond to them in an informed way.

Great advisor experience.  Within only two days of the Vonage implementation, the advisors were using the system as if they never used any other, according to Carole. The simple interface was an added bonus; engaged employees were soon delivering better results with engaged customers.

Workforce Management. In addition, Vax are using Vonage Workforce Management option to optimize staff utilization. Part of this is the quality tool to assess the performance of advisors and ensure Vax offers the best experience to customers.

Contingency operations. The cloud technology means that advisors can log onto Vonage Contact Center with Salesforce integration wherever there is a phone line and internet connection, meaning Vax can operate in the event of a disruption or disaster.

'I have to pinch myself. We’ve got a great new contact center and highly motivated customer engagement team. Previously, we had people upset on the floor; there were numerous complaints from customers — it’s such a stepchange. The team have done an amazing job. I’m delighted for our customers. We’re working at the next level'.

Carole Edwards, Head of Customer Contact, Vax