Challenge

Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic our client was experiencing an unprecedented increase in customer demand. As a result they needed to rapidly scale up capacity.

• Negotiate and finalise contractual terms.
• Headcount ramp up plan to required headcount of 750 within 8 weeks.
• Onboard and virtually train agents.
• Set up and implement a QA program based COPC standards.

Clients cost to serve was too high with a process that was lacking standardisation.

There were no sales taking place through service touch points. There was no established customer journey and churn was too high.

Scalability of low-cost English was a repetitive issue and quality of CSAT was poor due to lack of native language skills / resources.

Solution

Over a seven (7) day timeframe we:

• Negotiated and signed contract; including costing & governance.
• Implemented ramp up plan of 100 customer service representatives weekly to reach required headcount of 750 within 8 weeks.
• Onboarded and virtually trained customer service representatives via videoconferencing from central training team based in SA, across geographies, in SA, Colombia, and the Philippines.
• Designed and implemented a QA program based on the COPC© methodology.

Sourcing from South Africa included the deployment of Customer Journey Mapping teams, COPC certification of our OPS leadership team, specific recruitment initiatives towards sales from service channels, and implementation of native speakers only.

We conducted thorough pre-hiring tests through our onboarding Academy and adopted the Harambee recruitment model as well as stringent language assessments.

Results

• Rapid Entrepreneurial, flexible and nimble approach enabled success.
• Activated campaign in a 7-day window.
• Our ability to act quickly allowed us to win Voice in addition to Chat and Email.
• Handled 1 Million Customer contacts in Q1’2020.
• Achieved this with a fully activated BCP as of 1st of March 2020, servicing from Work From Home with no service disruption at any time!
• Costs to serve were significantly lowered (~30%).
• Costs to serve were significantly lowered (~30%).
• Quality of Service / CSAT improved significantly (~15%).
• Sales from service improved and gained Global acceptance.
• Learning curve / Glidepath impressive (ahead of existing partners while still in a major ramp up phase).