Customer Consulting Celebrates – And Advocates A Strategic Approach To Customer Management

Oct. 21, 2009 - PRLog -- Speaking at the event, Simon Rustom, CCL’s managing director, commented: “Current issues involve the use of the web, and especially social networking, for customer contact and customer care but, ten years ago, everyone was buying Siebel and we were being told that ‘you won’t need call centres in five years time’.

“We witnessed the outsourcing of call centres – first to Ireland and then to places such as India. Yet, in this decade, call centres have not only become ‘multimedia contact centres’ but we have begun to see some businesses bring these centres back to the UK.

Over the last ten years, CCL’s standing and expertise has been increasingly recognised - with its executives being in demand to provide industry benchmarks and to judge industry awards such as the European Call Centre Awards.

“In that time, we’ve made a big difference to some of our client companies,” Rustom added. “As part of a global contact centre strategy, we reduced one client’s costs by 17% and significantly improved service levels to its customers.

“We raised employee satisfaction within a division of a UK retail bank from 59% to 85% and raised the NPS score for how a Train Operating Company (TOC) handles delays from 29% to 46%. Moreover, we saved the same TOC £75,000 on an Automatic Call Distributor.

“We increased the retention of ‘lost’ financial services customers for a large insurance client from zero to 40%, as well as designed and planned a large call centre virtualisation project for a global travel group.

“We acted alongside our client in a major Avaya IP Genesys installation to quality assure the deliverables from the technical and consulting suppliers. We also reduced processing backlogs by 80% within 12 weeks for a major health provider to achieve service levels and stop customers leaving.

“We improved sales productivity for a client in the financial services sector by 300% in just eight weeks,” he added. “We also designed and implemented an operational improvement programme for a major blue chip company, which resulted in a six per cent increase in customer satisfaction.”

Although the party celebrated CCL’s considerable achievements over the past ten years, it also provided an opportunity to look to the future, with the launch of CCL’s revolutionary approach to customer management.

Rustom believes that many current customer management programmes fail because of inadequate customer strategy; adopting a piecemeal or un-sustained project approach; placing too great an emphasis on technology; inadequate implementation skills, and lack of flexibility, alignment and leadership. Consequently, Rustom advocates a three step approach to customer management: ‘fixing the basics’ and defining strategy; embedding best practice, and then growing customers’ lifetime value to the organisation, enhancing brand value, matching investment with potential in marketing, sales and customer service while also reducing marketing and sales costs.

For further details of this approach, contact Kathy Duxbury at CCL on +44 (0) 1908 441012 or email kathy.duxbury@customerconsulting.com

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About Customer Consulting Limited

Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) is a specialist customer and change management company. It helps organisations to optimise their return on investment in customer management - especially contact centres and customer-orientated information and technology.

Its vision is to demonstrate that a best practice approach to customer management delivers sustainable business growth. CCL aims to deliver a combination of insight, intellect, wisdom and pragmatism - combined with a real understanding of people - to achieve commercial results that are beyond the norm. Using a joint project team approach, CCL offers advice and support to help companies develop and implement customer strategies that produce results.

With its 100 consultants averaging 20 years experience, CCL helps business leaders and their teams – including those at Aviva, BUPA, South West Trains and Orange – to activate their internal resources and ensure measurable success.

Further information from:

Kathy Duxbury, Customer Consulting, 00 44 (0) 1908 441012/ 00 44 (0) 7976 405779; kathy.duxbury@customerconsulting.com

Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, 00 44 (0)1727 860405; bob.little@boblittlepr.com