Two public sector organisations won presitigious awards at the month's Customer Contact Innovation Awards.  The awards were presented at the Planning Forum’s 10th anniversary conference in London on 20th April, with other prizes being taken by Netflights, Shop Direct, Ventura and Scottish Power who won the overall Contact Centre Innovation Award 2010.  Click here to find out about site vists to all winners and finalists during the summer. 

Harrow Council gained a prestigious Public Sector Innovation Award for an outstanding initiative that transformed rubbish collection, the number one source of customer complaint.  Concerns from residents about rubbish collection were the top issue facing Councillors and their initiative to modernise communications between the waste collection truck and the contact centre, have revolutionised the customer contact experience. Their investment in live wireless data capture has enabled them to resolve 95% of customer calls at first contact, while avoidable contacts have fallen by 100 calls a week leading to a saving of £90,000 a year and more satisfied customers.

“We have much happier customers and much shorter calls,” Carol Cutler, Director of Business Transformation and Customer Service at Harrow Council explains. “A massive service improvement” comments Councillor Paul Osborn.  On 15th June Harrow are opening their doors as part of specially facilitated site visit and seminar event within the Planning Forum’s best practice programme.

“This is a fantastic achievement,” says Paul Smedley, Executive Director of the Professional Planning Forum. “Harrow Council has shown what can be done when organisations understand the root cause of customer contact and target investment on genuinely transforming services.”

HM Revenue & Customs  sectured the Innovation Award for Integrated Planning, transforming performance to handle an increase of almost 1 million calls by integrating planning across many different departments to promote early renewal, initiate an outbound campaign and create an enthusiastic contingency team of 1000 advisors from other areas of work.

“I am truly pleased for all involved in this project as delivering an acceptable service given such a massive uplift in demand was a huge challenge. The HMRC has learnt from past experiences and has put measures in place by working across all areas of their vast organisation in a joined up and methodical way.  Moreover, the people have not been lost in this and the enthusiasm shown by the employees to deliver excellent service to the customers was incredible”, enthuses Dave Vernon, Head of Best Practice at the Professional Planning Forum.

The HMRC handled almost 1 million more calls than the previous year and cut busy messages by 80% during the annual Tax Credit renewal period when incoming calls rise over 600% above the norm. By working with stakeholders from across the business and analysing performance in the previous year, plans were set up to shift demand, cross-skill advisors and start outbound calling, rather than just recruiting for the peak. IVR messaging was developed, a contingency team of 1000 advisors cross-trained and a 27-day outbound campaign exceeded all expectation, making over 50,000 contacts, 20,000 more than predicted.

“The big message was to renew early and that campaign was successful … we got together the back office, the front office and marketing,” explained Vicky Passant, Demand Control Manager at HMRC.  “This success is down to effective planning and collaborative working,” endorsed John Terry, Regional Manager, Contact Centres

The Contact Centre Innovation Awards are organised by the Professional Planning Forum. The awards were presented at the Planning Forum’s 10th anniversary conference in London on 20th April, with individual category prizes being taken by HM Revenue & Customs, Netflights, Shop Direct, Ventura and Scottish Power who won the overall Contact Centre Innovation Award 2010. 

The winners were selected by a team of judges who visited each of the 17 shortlisted organisations, and then assessed them against a strict set of criteria. “Every year the process of judging gets harder.  The contact centre industry has changed so much in the last 10 years and each year we see new exciting innovations that make you proud to be part of the industry,” comments Steve Woosey, the Planning Forum’s Membership Director.