An Interview with the A2Dominion team
In this interview Simon Thorpe meets some of the management team and explores how real-time feedback can help drive both agent and customer satisfaction.
About A2Dominion
A2Dominion is a leading housing provider and property developer, managing over 35,000 homes and building thousands more across London and the South East. The Group offers high-quality sustainable homes for sale, shared ownership and private rent, with many available through its FABRICA by A2Dominion brand
It also provides affordable and social rented homes, student, key worker and temporary accommodation, as well as supported and sheltered housing. With a unique approach to housebuilding, all of the profits generated by the Group are reinvested into supporting its social purpose, helping it to deliver more homes and services to customers.
The Challenge
A busy contact centre environment can make it difficult for individual agents to gauge their own performance. But, as the management team at housing group A2Dominion discovered, real-time feedback can help drive both agent and customer satisfaction…
What has introducing a customer satisfaction tool meant to your organisation?
Brett Hollins, Quality and Performance Manager at A2Dominion:
“Introducing this tool has helped us to transform the service we offer. We are now getting real-time feedback, which we can jump on straight away and identify whether there is something we can do for that customer then and there. It’s also allowing us to see much more clearly what is driving dissatisfaction and what steps can be taken to improve things. In the second month since implementation, customer satisfaction has jumped to 81%.”
Lorna Lucien, Director of Customer Services at A2Dominion:
“It’s been a force for positivity. Our Customer Service Officers love being able to see how they are performing and it gives them ownership over the service they are providing. The team was surprised by some of the first results that came through and the drivers behind that – but it has given us a common mission to improve that score. That agent insight is really important, but a great secondary benefit has been the level of healthy competition it has introduced among individual agents – which is driving improvement even further.”
What attracted you to the Bright solution?
BH:
“Bright Navigator was an improvement on our previous customer feedback solution, which couldn’t offer a live feed and wasn’t as insightful. It didn’t mean as much because the feedback wasn’t actionable. With the new tool, we knew we would be able to start driving change immediately. We can also link scores to different call types to see in which areas we can improve first time resolution.”
LL:
“We saw Bright speaking at a conference and as soon as we met with the team and started talking about the project, we knew they understood our challenge. The product was stronger than anything else we were being offered: it’s automated to eliminate cherry picking; it’s real-time; and it allows everyone in our Customer Service Centre to have access to the results, making it very inclusive. What’s more, the tool allows us to compare our performance not only with other housing associations, but with other types of organisation in the UK. It gives us a clear picture of how we are viewed by the whole market.
“I also like that I can get alerts on my phone with the latest performance results. No matter where I am, I am straight on to our leadership team asking what’s going on if we ever get a negative result.”
BH:
“We also love the fact that the Bright team is very personable and that they are all customer service experts. It makes sense to talk to people who understand and want to help – and who are just as passionate as we are.”
What have been the challenges in embedding the solution?
LL:
“We have so much insight now, we are almost overwhelmed with it. So a big challenge is in how we disseminate the information and package it to appeal to other departments so they can start driving improvements in their own performance.
“We have also re-launched our coaching framework to align it with how we do our QA scoring with the satisfaction survey so another challenge is making sure that embeds properly and that the agents are happy with it.”
How will you use the solution going forward?
BH:
“I can see the benefits with the automated performance reporting as it will allow the Quality team to focus on analysing results and coming up with solutions rather than spending so much time creating reports. A proactive and effective quality team will help improve customer satisfaction even further.”
LL:
“I feel like we are just dipping our toe in at the moment and I can see a lot of potential, particularly in how we communicate with the rest of the business. We are now able to provide concrete evidence that we are doing a good job . This means we carry a bit more weight in the important conversations and I can see the contact centre becoming a hub of information driving change throughout the business.”
If you would like to know more about Bright Navigator, email [email protected]
