Consumer Advice Services for 22 North West Local Authorities
The Challenge
Consumer Direct was established to regionalise—and hence standardise – customer advice services previously handled by individual Consumer Advice Bureaux, Trading Standards Departments, and other customer support services. The aim of the programme, managed by the Office of Fair Trading, is to create centres of excellence to provide clear and practical consumer advice.
In the North West, Consumer Direct looked to consolidate the services provided to 22 area local authorities, but needed a partner able to address 3 key challenges:
- Availability of skilled labour
- Consolidation of local processes and requirements into a single best practice approach
- Rapid mobilisation
The Solution
As one of the first external activities of Agilisys’ 7-year ICT partnership with Cumbria County Council, we worked together and successfully bid for the project.
To address the challenges, we focused on forming the right relationships and procedures to ensure a steady state of operations within a relatively short time. As such, a team experienced in both contact centre and project management was assembled to work on the implementation and service provision solution. This team included local authority managers seconded to the project, as well as an officer from Cumbria Trading Standards.
To ensure skilled staff, we used a comprehensive and rigorous recruiting programme, followed by thorough mandatory accredited training for those hired. This is supported by a detailed change management programme of regular comunications with all stakeholders, as well as an initial phased introduction of the service, to incorporate lessons learned.
Finally, we developed a central shared IT and telephony platform, to allow access to numerous support applications, enabling advisers with the knowledge and tools to help them resolve consumer enquiries as efficiently as possible. The state-of-the-art telephony platform provides not only standard functions such as queue management and routing, but also allows for access from multiple locations, an invaluable tool for business continuity.
The Benefits
Within 5 months, the contact centre was providing improved access to quality advice and information for the North West’s 6.8 million consumers, and today handles significantly more enquiries than initially planned, including responding to overflow from other Consumer Direct centres around the UK.
The success of the centre can be in part attributed to the partnership’s ability to source and retain a high quality workforce, with a staff turnover of less than 5%, compared to national average of 25% or more.
In addition, the Consumer Direct North West contact centre in Barrow has contributed significantly to regeneration in the community, having brought a current mix of 60 positions at the centre, with plans for continued growth.