Customer Engagement Examples of Excellence

In our latest podcast episode, industry experts Martin, Paul, Jim, and Steven Miller shared insights into Benenden Health's groundbreaking journey towards operational excellence in their customer contact centre. Through collaboration with Sabio and Genesys, Benenden Health has not only addressed operational challenges but also prioritised the wellbeing and support of their workforce, marking a transition from traditional Workforce Management (WFM) to a more holistic approach known as Workforce Engagement Management (WEM).

In this episode of The Voice of Customer Experience, Gerry Brown is joined by Louise Walsh, Chief Customer Contact Officer at Utilita Energy. Utilita formed in 2003, is the UK’s first and only specialist Pay As You Go Smart Energy supplier, whose mission is to offer consumers better service and a fairer deal. Louise has been with Utilita for over 12 years in a variety of increasingly important customer facing roles. In this podcast she talks about delivering “Tech with integrity” and shares her experiences and passion for helping customers and inspiring colleagues to deliver on that promise every day in an often challenging and emotional contact centre environment.

In this episode of The Voice of Customer Experience, Gerry Brown is joined by Dion Millson, CEO of Elerian AI, whose innovative technology is helping companies automate telephone calls, using Intelligent Voice Agents (IVA) to deliver a natural, human-like interactions and a consistently great caller experience.

We’ll explore the differences between basic, generalist chatbots, and pre-trained IVAs designed specifically for contact centres, that can be easily deployed without need for expensive, time-consuming engineering.

Dion takes us on a journey to look at some of the best inbound and outbound IVA use cases that deliver tangible ROI’s, explore the implementation process and how best to get started with an IVA.

We’ll discuss how the analytics and data captured by an IVA can positively influence the experience for both customers and colleagues, where generative AI fits into the story and have a look at the future of IVAs in the contact centre and beyond.

Everywhere you turn, every company you transact with is trying to sign you up to their new loyalty scheme. Retail is saturated with loyalty schemes but are they effective? Divya will explore the rise of loyalty schemes, their purpose and how to create lasting relationships with your customers.

We are all potentially vulnerable at some stage in our lives be it a life event like redundancy or a bereavement through to our own health. 
Consumer duty is all about delivering good outcomes for all customers and vulnerability is mentioned more that 100 times in the final paper so from a regulatory aspect, it’s critical.  We have never been driven by regulation alone and we have a market leading strategy and societal responsibility behind our approach.
Customer facing colleagues are key when it comes to supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances however we recognise the need to really embed vulnerability consideration into everything we do and into our product, proposition and communication deign.  If we don’t embed consideration at this earlier stage, our customer facing colleagues will always be met with customers struggling to engage with our products and services.
Our approach to embedding vulnerability consideration is key to helping us achieve good customer outcomes and our approach has been to embed a framework supported by principles and standards as well as a three pronged approach to training which has allowed us to bring vulnerability to life for our colleagues and to help close the empathy gap for colleagues fortunate enough to have not been impacted by vulnerability or an accessibility challenge.

Discover how the Financial Times works to understand their customer story.

Listen to this session from the 2023 Customer Engagement Transformation Conference, where Charlotte Owen, Head of Customer Planning & Customer Relationship shared how  unlocking your customer needs and motivations supports strategic decision making and allows for commercial growth.

Bupa is a large global organisation and within the UK has over 26,000 employees supporting over 4.7 million customers with their health and care needs. As one of the leading health insurance providers in the UK, Bupa Insurance has witnessed the impact that Covid-19 has had on the population and the healthcare industry.

The pandemic has changed the world as we know it, our outlook on the world and our attitude to health and wellbeing. During the pandemic the limited access to healthcare gave rise to a change in how customers looked to access healthcare. Bupa needed to ensure that its people remained close to the customers to understand how their needs were changing so that its products and services could support them in their daily lives and remain relevant and provide value.

To achieve this Bupa set out six strategic challenges to be achieved within 3 months, one of which is to enables its people to get closer to the customer and take ownership for delivering the change needed to improve the customer improvement. During this session Anna Wilcox, Head of Customer experience shares how they did so....

The use of Apps has grown phenomenally through the pandemic years and are known to drive loyalty with customers. In a recent report from Google, they quoted that retail brands that design app journeys to drive customer loyalty have a Net Promoter Score that’s 32% better than retailers that do not.
However, customers are starting to be more selective with the Apps they are keeping on their personal devices. Bethan talked about how to set your App strategy to drive customer loyalty and growth.
Bethan is a customer experience specialist. She started her career advising Retail, Services and Media businesses as a Strategy Consultant. Over the last 10 years she has led the development of customer propositions for some of the UK’s leading retail brands including John Lewis, Waitrose and B&Q. Recently, she drove the transformation of the JL App putting it at the heart of their experience.

Discover how the Financial Times works to understand their customer story. How unlocking their needs and motivations supports strategic decision making and allows for commercial growth.

Engaged employees = Superior CX: Empowering employees boosts their engagement, leading to exceptional customer experiences.

Ownership and Initiative: Empowerment fosters employee ownership and initiative, driving proactive problem-solving and improved CX.

Collaboration and Innovation: Empowering employees encourages collaboration, knowledge sharing, and innovation, enhancing overall customer experiences.

By empowering employees, organizations can elevate CX through engagement, ownership, collaboration, and innovation.

In today's podcast, Gerry Brown, Chief Customer Rescue Office at The Customer Lifeguard, and Leigh Hopwood, CEO at the CCMA, delve deeper into the importance of the contact centre and its role in driving customer loyalty and retention. They highlight the pressure on the frontline, the need to close the gap between customer expectations and service delivery, and the effective utilisation of contact centre insights to drive business change. Through their insightful discussion, they emphasise the critical role that the contact centre plays in shaping the customer experience and ultimately, the success of an organisation.

A Fireside Chat with Sabina Onwuka, Customer Services Manager at London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

Hybrid working is without doubt one of most significant changes to the way we work in living memory. For many businesses, enabling remote working was a necessary response to ensure business continuity in the face of the challenges thrown at us by the pandemic. We now have the opportunity to take stock; to reclaim control, create balance and reshape the new ways of working in a way that works for our people and our businesses. The debate rages on about the most appropriate way to do this and of course the answer may well not be one size fits all. Join us as we discuss what we all need to be thinking about before we make the changes needed to make hybrid work.

Recognising the needs of vulnerable consumers can be paramount to ensuring great customer services. Hear from Tandem Bank's Managing Director of Servicing and Tandem’s Customer Experience Manager on how they utilised speech analytics to track vulnerable and cost of living consumers behaviours.

After 20 years in the insurance industry, I joined Fidelity in August 2020 to focus on our approach to supporting customers in vulnerable situations. I started my career in a call centre and progressed into management roles before pivoting to conduct regulation, where I became subject matter expert in significant regulatory changes in consumer protection like the Insurance Distribution Directive and the Fair Treatment of Vulnerable Customers. I have always worked to provide good outcomes for customers and so moving into this role was ideally suited to me. It’s a very rewarding and challenging role.

Maria is the Customer Outcome & Resolution Director for Starling Bank.  She is an experienced senior leader, with a proven track record in the financial services sector which spans over 20 years.  Maria cares passionately about customer centricity and has successfully delivered a number of operational performance and customer experience improvements at multiple financial services organisations in order to support business and strategic ambitions

Ever wondered what it’s like to be working for a company that to inspire women to feel amazing and celebrate their figures? Join our exclusive interview with Julie Austin, Marketing and Digital Director at Bravissimo as she tells us more about her role, recent projects, and future plans.