Interim management, coaching and mentoring

During periods of change within an organisation’s customer service or sales function, it is vital that "business as usual" continues whilst the changes being put in place are adopted and fully embedded. This requires a co-ordinated approach to change management. Our independent consultants provide assurance throughout the process of change as well help to fully embed the performance culture and rigour needed to rapidly realise benefits.

Our Interim managers therefore provide:

• Independent insight: We act as a critical friend and advisor; this support is impartial and non-partisan and is wholly focused on delivering the stated objectives of the client’s performance improvement initiative. 
• Design, and Embed Change: Whether the change is associated with new systems, the development of organisations, redesigned processes or whole sale change to the operating model our pragmatism and professional operational management de-risk the change. 
• Tried and tested methodology: Having undertaken many years of interim management we know what works and what doesn’t work when grappling with operational and performance issues.

Our proven track record in Interim Management has helped organisations to secure revenue gains, improve customer experience, reduce staff attrition and sickness levels and embed a sustainable performance management culture. 

Interim Assignment One

Sales Transformation & Interim Management

for a Capital Equipment and PPE Supplier

• The focus of this assignment was to aid the new MD and Sales & Marketing Director to improve both Sales and Customer Experience and create an integrated OMNI channel sales capability.
• Creating, recruiting and leading a new inside sales capability, redesigning the operating model integrating inside sales, customer service, order processing and field sales within a new contact centre.
• Defined sales performance management processes, maximising utilisation by focusing on developing structured conversations with customers rather than burning through data. Average sales per agent per month £73,000, this was partly achieved by partnering with field sales and persuading them of the benefits of allowing the inside sales team to sell high-end capital equipment direct.
• Aligned inside and field sales to specific sales territories and specific customer segments each working towards a common revenue target. Increased sales lead qualification by 60% through the introduction of a lead qualification process (SCOTSMAN)
• Led new customer acquisition strategies to exceed company forecasts. Working closely with the Digital Marketing team to shape and improve the segmentation and scheduling enhancing campaign effectiveness and driving inbound traffic. Increasing the number of active Small Business customers from 962 to 1,200+.
• Created and facilitated a KPI-driven environment with an emphasis on human engagement, listening to and positively exploring customer needs, building long-term relationships, and helping customers buy with confidence. Increasing the number of active Secondary Account customers from 151 to 300+
• Scoped and defined system requirements for a new set of applications to replace the company’s existing telephony system before deploying Mitel’s Contact Centre portfolio, which advanced the company’s requirement to create an OMNI Channel customer experience and introduced a single queue capability and dialler functionality.
• Initiating plans to drive efficiency to augment customer journeys. Then, working collaboratively with IT to scope and refine system enhancements, including incorporating specific account planning tools within SalesForce and a scripting capability.
• Providing ongoing structured coaching and mentoring to sales managers as well as inside sales team members. Introduced and facilitated morning sales meetings to discuss the sales pipeline and to provide advice and guidance to team members.
• Working closely with the e-commerce team to create a campaign calendar aligned to customer buying behaviour, and Mailchimp initiatives were targeted and contained Key messages targeted and appealing to specific customer segments. Ensuring each campaign was complemented by a dynamic point-of-sale leaflet that could be tailored by Sales Executives in real-time to meet the needs of each customer

Interim Assignment Two

Interim Head of Sales Contact Centre

Financial Service Organisation

• Full P&L responsibility. Engaged to develop and manage a new inside sales, outbound contact centre capability to sell regulated products (pensions, life insurance and unit trusts) over the telephone as well as generate and diarise qualified appointments for territory-based financial advisors.
• Recruiting, coaching and managing a team of 60 Financial Planning Advisers, 3 Team Managers, 1 M.I. analyst, 1 Trainer and 1 scheduling analyst. The team generated over 300 qualified leads per day and £250,000 in sales each week. The outbound contact centre was later expanded to over 100 FTE.
• Accountable for delivering the sales budget and leading the productivity, effectiveness and optimisation of the direct sales function, including people, processes optimisation, systems, planning and reporting. Viably scaling the sales function to achieve constantly moving targets.
• Developed telesales strategy and operating model (including how field bases and telesales teams interfaced) and documented inside sales processes.
• Playing a pivotal role in identifying and deploring Contact Centre technology (CRM, Dialler, IVR) and operational solutions to drive sales and improve productivity.
• Working collaboratively with Marketing to devise marketing campaigns. 

Interim Assignment Three

Sales & Service Transformation Lead

Travel Company

• This was a MD-sponsored intervention focused on defining the Customer Management Strategy, particularly their ability to identify, grow and retain profitable customers.
• ·Providing contact centre management oversight, determining and implementing improvements to the three contact centre operations, and providing direction, mentoring and coaching support to 2 Contact Centre Managers and 20 Team Leaders. This was very much a hands-on transformation assignment.
• Translating the client brief into tractable work streams, before assuming the role of Sales and Contact Centre Workstream Lead for a 12-month sales and service transformation project.
• Mapping customer journeys and detailing customer persona profiles, surfacing customer pain and pleasure points and obtaining a deep understanding of needs and motivations across the ‘as is’ end-to-end customer journey. Successfully challenge the why and how and develop the “to be” processes and structures. Delivering improvements to IVR scripting reducing call transfers from 15% to 4%
• Devised an inside sales structure and strategy for the business increasing ‘Groups’ sales by over 30% in twelve months, by aligning what was considered to be an Administration Team with the contact centre sales strategy. In addition to introducing account management, instilling a sales focus amongst team members, analysing consumer spend patterns as well as providing ongoing sales coaching to agents and team leaders
• Acting as the champion for continuous improvement across Customer Operations teams, working to instil a culture and approach that ensured services were delivered as easily, cost-effectively and efficiently as possible.
• Reviewing Channel usage, then executing strategies to drive web utilisation and self-service capability for flight and holiday bookings/amendments. Increasing web bookings by 15%.
• Improving connectivity between departments and the contact centres to consolidate relationships and improve customer experience such as obtaining the campaign calendar from marketing so the contact centre Operations Team could forecast campaign-driven call volumes and schedule resources accordingly.
• Developing and reporting on a suite of KPIs to measure the level and quality of customer service within the operation. The introduction of heatmaps and coaching managers and their direct reports on their use, allowing them to identify service failures in real-time, and take preventative action. This contributed to total calls answered increasing from 60% to 95%.
• Introducing a new performance management framework with visible operational supervision (floor walking), with coaching at its core. Instilling queue consciousness amongst staff along with a new call coaching process targeted at AHT reduction, contributed to a 60-second reduction in AHT, thus releasing 7 FTE to undertake social media activities.
• Initiated best practice customer journeys, in addition to improved customer engagement training, placing the right person with the right job skills to respond to customer interactions, reduced the propensity for call-backs by 25%, as customer queries were resolved during the call and provided for a more consistent call handling as evidenced by a reduced variance in average handling times.
• Collaborating, negotiating and communicating with stakeholders across the enterprise to design and execute people, process and technology improvements with a focus on improving customer outcomes and reducing cost-to-serve.

Interim Assignment Four

Contact Centre Strategic Review / Improvement Lead

Local Authority Housing  BPO Contact Centre

• Working within a social housing BPO contact centre which was established and operated, by LA Housing Department. The engagement focused on reviewing service performance against Best in Class suppliers then, providing direction and support to the function head to deliver service improvements.
• Developed an independent ‘baseline’ of the current situation – focused on the call centre, identifying and prioritising any potential future changes to the operational make-up, as well as highlighting some pragmatic quick wins relating to service improvement.
• Authored a detailed best value-driven options appraisal to inform the service strategy laying out the size, skills and resources to be in place to deliver the strategy and evaluate each of the candidate operating models.
• Conducting stakeholder interviews to determine what they would require from the service moving forward
• Outlined a new operating model for the function, closing skill and function gaps within the present structure that were impacting negatively upon the effectiveness of On Call.
• Collegiately working with the Director to identify and deliver quick win solutions to the most immediate inhibitors of departmental performance
• Introducing Fault Codes as part of diagnostic call answering to identify exact problems in the housing portfolio in order to ensure the correct allocation of resources and materials so that a first-time fix was achieved thereby reducing return calls
• Delivered a 30% reduction in Average Handling Time (AHT) through improved call handling skills and pro-active performance management by Team Leaders.
• Improved call scripting, which was complimented by the multi-skilling staff allowing calls to be routed effectively to the longest available agent, regardless of team.
• Introduced call avoidance strategies by encouraging customers to use the web or e-mail to engage with the department resulting in a 15% reduction in call volumes.
• Authored and delivered a 5-day Performance Management Training Program attended by Managers and Team Leaders, introduced the GROW Coaching Model and call coaching targeted at reducing the cost to serve.