HomeServe works with Sabio to unlock £1m plus annual return on its Speech Analytics investment

Leading home assistance company combines speech analytics with effective stakeholder engagement to achieve seven-figure efficiency savings for each of the last three years

Customer Experience solutions specialist Sabio Group has worked with HomeServe, one of the country’s leading home assistance companies, to help unlock a seven-figure return on the firm’s speech analytics investment.

Combining speech analytics technology with effective stakeholder and business improvement engagement has enabled HomeServe to secure its £1 million annual efficiency savings target for each of the last three years. At the same time, the company has also succeeded in delivering an improved service by consistently identifying and resolving the customer journey pinch points that can frustrate users.

“We’re committed to providing effortless service to our customers, so our contact centre team wanted to look beyond traditional voice of the customer feedback techniques to explore exactly why our customers were contacting HomeServe,” commented Alison Hanson, Director of Contact Centre Strategy for HomeServe. “To address this we determined that adopting a comprehensive speech analytics-based approach would help us to understand how our customer journeys were really performing.

Sabio’s successful speech analytics deployment enabled the HomeServe team to focus on four key areas – internal call transfers, repeat calls, hold times and digital journey completion – that were causing most frustration for customers. Focusing speech analytics on these areas has led to impressive results, including:

• Achieving an 8% reduction in call transfers by studying what customers whose calls were being transferred actually said, and introducing wording and option changes on the IVR to provide a more seamless experience for customers
• Identifying the key issues that were leading to repeat calls and working with the business owners of those issues to develop updated processes that removed repeat call drivers – for example, introducing proactive text messages has secured an annual 100,000 reduction in repeat calls saving around £250,000
• Targeting above average hold times by introducing new training processes that help agents to resolve issues and achieve an average 22 seconds per call reduction in hold times
• Using speech analytics to identify those calls that are the result of customers being unable to complete their digital journeys – helping the HomeServe digital team to focus on specific areas that were proving too complex for customers

“HomeServe has clearly demonstrated the power of speech analytics, particularly through recognising that it needs to be a continual process that keeps on identifying those issues that are impacting customers. Critically, HomeServe has also worked to closely align its speech analytics activities with the company’s broader change plan and ongoing business improvement activities – ensuring that it has the processes in place to resolve any issues that are identified,” added Daniel Stimpson, Head of Workforce Optimisation Solutions at Sabio.

As one of Europe’s longest-established and most successful customer engagement solutions specialists, Sabio is particularly well placed to help organisations such as HomeServe to add value to their speech analytics deployments. From initial engagements to define analytics requirements and help in building a business case for speech analytics, Sabio works with organisations to help secure a rapid return on their speech analytics investment.

About HomeServe:

HomeServe is one of the UK’s leading home assistance providers and for more than 25 years it has kept its customers’ lives moving by delivering a range of industry-leading services – including plumbing, drainage, electrics, heating and much more – through its nationwide network of HomeServe-approved engineers.

Nearly two million UK customers – and nearly eight million worldwide – place their trust in HomeServe when it comes to fixing, maintaining and looking after their home.

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www.homeserve.com