Professional Planning Forum award winners announced

The awards were presented at the Planning Forum’s 13th conference in Warwickshire on 30th April, where each winner talked about how they achieved their outstanding results.

The winners showcase innovations that integrate improved use of technology and data with process improvement and cultural change to deliver demonstrable improvements to their customers and employees.

Winners included:

Innovation of the Year Award

BT Retail Customer Services gained this for radical changes that are making it easy for customers. The radical customer effort metric NetEasy has helped increase customer loyalty, deliver efficiency and emphatically engaged front-line advisors.

“If we make it easier for our customers day in, day out, we can be number one for customer service,” said Warren Buckley, Managing Director, Customer Service, BT.

Steve Woosey, Chief Executive of the Professional Planning Forum added. “This is a groundbreaking achievement. BT Retail has changed in a way many thought was impossible, believing that they could do better, for the customer and for colleagues. They realised that the customer was trying to tell them something and found a mechanism that was easy to understand, easy to make changes to processes and easy to improve the service offered. In fact, they put people first.”

Innovation Award for Cultural Transformation

BT Retail Customer Services

The Innovation award for Customer Engagement

Awarded to Charles Tyrwhitt, where new ways of listening to customers has driven 60% revenue growth and 70% customer loyalty.  This has empowered advisors and given Customer Service a vital role in championing the customer in the business.

The Innovation award for Integrated Planning

This was won by Concentrix. Their innovative partnership with Cisco has raised FTE just 5% to handle 20% more contacts for Cisco, by developing a multi-skilled resource methodology that is rolled out across both companies and has gained significant month on month increase in customer satisfaction.

The Innovation award for Customer Analytics

This was gained by Experian, where insightful data, together with collaborative, customer-focused conversations and agent-empowerment have driven customer satisfaction up 11% and long-term retention up 38%.

Innovation award for Culture and Quality

Motability Operations swept away with this award.  A tangible passion for service has led to a record-breaking and remarkable 96% in their customer satisfaction index and self-awareness has enabled advisors to be responsible for their own development & to gain benefit from the support on offer.

Public Service Innovation award

Motability Operations

The Innovation award for Service Virtualisation

This was presented to Sensee, whose outsourced homeworking model has raised the bar on performance and cut clients’ costs by 10%-14%. They have delivered full FSA/PCI compliance and created a high performing virtual operation that has a real team spirit and outperforms clients on all behavioural quality scores by an average of 16%.

Planning Forum Hero awards

These were presented to five outstanding customer contact professionals, recognising their exceptional personal contribution in developing the role of planning.

The 2013 Heroes are:

• Jamie Campbell, Forecasting and Scheduling GI Sales, LV=
• Dave Conway, Performance Improvement & Quality Manager, UKAR
• Jonathan George, Operations Director, White Concierge
• Clare McMillan, Senior Capacity Planning Analyst, Tesco Bank
• Simon Butler, Resource Planning Manager, Direct Line Group.

“It is exciting to see how customer operations are developing. Significantly, these innovations challenge the way organisations work, changing the role of the support team and the Customer Service department.  In many cases the impact reaches across the entire enterprise,” says Paul Smedley, Chair and Founder of the Professional Planning Forum.