Intertwine, Dutch Contact Center Outsourcer, Achieves Marked Increase In Customer Satisfaction
"Everyone wants to improve customer satisfaction. NICE CEM helped us identify how to do it by identifying new business processes that reduced the time it takes to resolve each customer request. The results have been remarkable. Just nine months after we started with NICE, we reduced complaints by 90% and increased customer satisfaction to 80%" - Rutger Pekelharing, Managing Director, Intertwine
Keeping Customers Satisfied
In the highly competitive world of mobile telecommunications, customer turnover (or 'churn') is the single most dangerous threat to profitability. The company that can identify the best way to boost customer retention has a distinct competitive edge.
When Intertwine was first contracted by Dutchtone to improve customer satisfaction, they selected NICE CEM. This solution was chosen for its ability to re-create interactions, pinpoint where customer responsiveness could be improved and to build lasting customer loyalty.
Intertwine used NiceUniverse, NICE's quality management system to capture voice and screens. By having access to on-line evaluation forms, analysis tools and sophisticated reporting capabilities, quality supervisors were quickly able to identify customer expectations and key problem areas.
Achieving Immediate Results
Intertwine discovered it was taking too long to resolve customer requests, and made an immediate goal to reduce call length and improve first call resolutions.
"With these goals in view, we immediately developed a training program that trained agents to ask customers up front why they were calling. In this way they could resolve issues as quickly as possible", commented Rutger Pekelharing. "It took only three weeks to see a dramatic decrease in call length. Customer satisfaction went up and new people waited far less time for their calls to be answered."
Empowering Agents
Intertwine also discovered that Dutchtone customers were repeatedly calling to check on their membership status - a source of frustration as well as many unnecessary calls.
Intertwine decided to give agents the tools to be able to make changes to memberships on line. In this way, agents could improve their responsiveness as well as their productivity. Previously, Dutchtone customers had to wait three to four weeks for their membership changes to be activated. Now the changes are made immediately and confirmations are sent to the members' cellular phones via SMS messaging. Dutchtone's customers are delighted.
After the success of this first change, agents were empowered to perform additional functions to improve customer responsiveness.
Long Term Benefits
Nine months after implementing NICE CEM solutions, Dutchtone is being seriously considered for a re-branding to Orange, thanks to the following results:
- Customer satisfaction increased from 66% to 80%
- Number of complaints per 10,000 customers was reduced by 90%
- 90% of the calls are now answered within 30 seconds
- The number of problems solved during the first call increased from 73% to 90%
"We've found that you can't mange what you can't measure", said Rutger Pekelharing. "By re-creating and evaluating interactions using NICE CEM, we have helped Dutchtone build long lasting customer loyalty and open doors for new business opportunities."