Agenda
5 October 2023, Manchester
Retain Agent Talent, Optimise Flexible & Hybrid Models & Adopt AI & New Tech Which Deliver Seamless-End-To-End Customer Journeys For Future-Proofed Customer-Centric Contact Centre Cultures & Experiences
08.30 Registration, Informal Networking & GIC Welcome
09.00 Morning Co-Chairs’ Opening Remarks
Florian Lange, Director Digital Health Solutions EMEA, Abbott
Elizabeth Fairburn, Customer Experience Director, Department for Work and Pensions
Hybrid & Flexible Contact Centres - Leadership/Management Techniques
09.10 Optimise Your Hybrid Customer Operations! Deliver Engaging Employee Comms, Mitigate Proximity Bias & Counter Connectivity Challenges To Increase Blended Model Efficiencies, Productivity & Performance
- Investigate how leaders can successfully engage and motivate remote teams to create a collaborative culture which keeps productivity and performance rates at a high
- Avoid proximity bias within your team by increasing the ease of digital communication and interaction to ensure out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind!
- How can contact centre managers best continue to support their remote agents to resolve customer issues quickly, effectively and achieve KPIs?
- Effective incentives to drive agents into the office for increased learning, collaboration and training to accelerate progress and development
Courtney Sheppard, Head of Customer Contact, UCAS
Internal Cultures & Agent Experience - Practical Steps
09.30 Drive Inclusion & Increase Agent Satisfaction Rates By Embedding Supportive & Collaborative Cultures Where Decisions Are Value-Driven To Ensure Staff Wellbeing Is A High Priority!
- Foster a collaborative and inclusive working environment to make sure staff feel part of key decisions which bring exciting changes to drive commitment and satisfaction to their role
- Are you supporting your staff’s wellbeing? Build an open and honest culture as contact with agents becomes more complex and emotive to power psychological safety and engagement
- Create a ‘community of coping’ that goes beyond the four walls of the contact centres to ensure that the agent’s wellbeing is always high priority
- Do your employees feel overstretched? Prevent staff burnout by cultivating environments where agents feel like they have the opportunity for freedom and personal expression, so that they don’t feel like robots reading off scripts!
Kevin Morley, Deputy Director – Customer Service, Crown Commercial Service
David Harrison, Director of Customer, Atlanta Group
Saleta Valdés Márquez, Head of Innovation & Customer Experience, Savoy Signature
Attract, Retain & Engage Agents - Secure The Best Agents In The North
10.00 Rethink Employee Strategies To Avoid High Agent Turnover Rates! Secure Investment For Innovative, Capability-Fuelling Programmes Which Engage, Develop & Retain Top Customer Contact Talent
- Be seen as an employer of choice! What “value-add” can you offer in terms of support and flexibility to stand out and attract new talent pools and retain experienced team members?
- Improve internal attitudes around contact centres to build company-wide pride in the function and help agents feel appreciated and excited to build their career with you
- Tried and tested retention strategies: understand what agents truly want to increase your talent offering and reach for a strengthened contact centre model
Alexandra da Silva Rodrigues, Strategic Advisor for Global Contact Centres, Radisson Hotel Group
10.40 Bonus Session; Reserved For Exclusive Conference Partner
11.10 Morning Refreshment Break & Informal Networking
Leverage New Tech & AI - Transform Operations In The North
11.40 New Tech Risks, New Tech Opportunities: Keep Pace With Emerging AI, Chatbots & Automation Systems For Insights Into When & Where To Adopt & Integrate Experience-Enhancing Tech Which Positively Impacts Customer Service
- How can you best integrate AI and new tech into existing customer service operations?
- The focus has been on customer experience, but how can we leverage new tech such as voice analytics and smart tech to best look out for our agents, improve their experience and service customers?
- It’s not always smooth sailing! Real-life examples which highlight mistakes made and lessons learnt to avoid creating clunky chatbots and poor customer experiences which fuel dissatisfaction
- Overcome hurdles to successfully implement and integrate AI into existing customer service operations for rapid responses, improved journeys and interactions that feel conversational rather than transactional
- Innovation and improvement: where can repetitive tasks be automated for agents to allow them to focus on the task at hand, increase efficiencies and deliver cost savings
Danny Devlin, Former Director, Customer Experience, Product and Service Delivery, Barclays UK
VoC: CX & Customer Journey - Seamless End-To-End / Best Practices & Insights
12.00 Proactive, Responsive & Engaging Customer-Centric Services! Design Seamless Customer Experiences & Journeys That Minimise Customer Pain Points From End-To-End To Increase Loyalty & Satisfaction Rates
- In this new era of customer experience, how can we embrace digitalisation to provide seamless end-to-end journeys without frustrating customers and driving dissatisfaction?
- Maintain quality and efficient services whilst keeping costs down: strike the balance between pressures of cost control and customer experience to ensure that CX remains a priority throughout every customer touchpoint
- Ensure smooth, timely transitions between automated flows and agent intervention during the customer journey to minimise pain points
- Drive L&D strategies to support agents around building a client-focused, personal approach to customer service that feels authentic to them and the business to drive business outcomes
- How can leadership rethink expectations around average handling times to allow agents to have more meaningful conversations with customers that will secure loyalty and satisfaction?
Nick Lygo-Baker, Global Director, Customer Digital Experience, MSD Animal Health
Learning & Developing Career Paths
12.20 Develop & Progress Your Contact Centre Agents For New Opportunities To Thrive In The New World Of Work
- Embed learning at the heart of our whole operation and transform how to do operational coaching
- Create a career framework that supports advisors to grow their skills and better serve customers
- Critical insights around implementing learning pathways that engage your people
Alison Jaap, Customer Care Director, OVO Energy
Naseera Hafeji, Head of Operational Coaching, OVO Energy
12.40 Bonus Session; Reserved For Exclusive Conference Partner
13.10 Lunch & Informal Networking For Speakers, Delegates & Partners
13.40 New Focus Group Sessions
a) Handling Agent Complaints
b) Agent Voice
c) Cost-Saving Strategies
d) Agent Wellbeing
e) Self Service
14.10 Afternoon Co-Chairs’ Opening Remarks
Sabina Onwuka, Head of Customer Services, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
Elizabeth Fairburn, Customer Experience Director, Department for Work and Pensions
Omnichannel Success - Winning Strategies!
14.20 Winning Omnichannel Strategies To Increase Business Potential, Differentiate From The Market & Attract More Customers By Optimising Your Channel Alignment To Deliver Smooth Contact Centre Operations
- Leverage customer data to evaluate engagement patterns across multiple touchpoints and select the best channels for maximum audience reach while saving time and resources
- Steer clear of bombarding your customers with disjointed communications by styling your omnichannel strategies to your customer to protect subscriptions and increase commerciality
- Keep customers engaged through intuitive communications: leverage social media platforms to serve customers on their terms and preferred digital and non-digital platforms
- Reduce triage time: implement lucrative technologies such as chatbots and voice recognition to resolve queries quickly and effectively without degrading the customer experience
Lambros Efstathiou, Digital Lead, NatWest Group
Actionable Data, Measurements & Insights - Critically Measure & Analyse
14.40 Leverage The Power Of Data: Maximise Customer Analytics To Create Actionable Insights For Improved Customer Service & Business Intelligence & Deliver Gold-Standard Contact Centre Services
- Audience segmentation: best-in-class strategies to generate quality, easy-to-segment data for more personalised and loyalty-enhancing contact centre experiences
- Turn data into meaningful insights to provide a single customer view which supports agents and drives targeted campaigns which improve the customer journey
- Maximise analytics and metrics to improve self-service channels and touchpoints for seamless contact centre interaction
- AI-based speech and text analytics: capture patterns, tones, and key words in customer conversations to gain valuable insights about the product and agent’s performance
- Discover sophisticated yet simple methods of measuring customer care and satisfaction in order to improve your services for long-term success
Changing Customer Expectations & Behaviours - Enhance Loyalty & Profits - Panel
15.00 Harness Customer Data & Insights To Ensure That The VOC Is At The Forefront Of All Decisions For Higher Retention & Loyalty During The Cost-Of-Living Crisis
- Analyse your customer’s needs: what is customer behaviour telling us about their preferred methods of contact, and how is it evolving for forward-thinking contact centre strategies in 2023 and beyond?
- In the face of the cost-of-living crisis, maintain retention rates by identifying vulnerable customers and implementing service strategies to support and retain them
- Real-life examples: navigate the most common pain-points and how to solve them and implement change in an agile, responsive manner to create positive outcomes
- Optimise L&D programs to ensure agents are effectively equipped with the knowledge to navigate increasing numbers of complex customer situations and tough conversations
Lucinda Scott, Customer Service Director, First Direct
Lambros Efstathiou, Digital Lead, NatWest Group
Ingrid van Ruiswijk, Manager Customer Service, New Balance
Nick Lygo-Baker, Global Director, Customer Digital Experience, MSD Animal Health
Sabina Onwuka, Head of Customer Services, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
Saleta Valdés Márquez, Head of Innovation & Customer Experience, Savoy Signature
15.30 Afternoon Refreshment Break With Informal Networking
16.00 Bonus Session; Reserved For Exclusive Conference Partner
Operational Efficiencies & Tackling Outsourcing - Optimised Strategies
16.30 Refreshed Contact Centre Strategies To Increase Operational Efficiencies Which Facilitate The Delivery Of Gold-Star Customer Service Whilst Saving Time, Costs & Resources
- Save time, resources and efforts through capitalising on the correct technology for your contact centre to reduce handling times and allow your agents more breathing room to deliver the most effective response
- In-house or outsource? Overcome internal barriers with new, evidence-based innovations which increase contact centre operational efficiencies and protect profits
- Increase business and employee resilience by closely aligning operational goals with the needs of your team and improving interdepartmental communication
Leadership & Management Techniques - New for 2023!
16.50 Invest In Your People, Invest In Your Contact Centre Leaders Of The Future: L&D, Management & Career Pipelining Strategies To Retain Top-Tier Talent
- Hand your team the keys to their development: increase access to training and promote collaborative, self-fuelled learning
- Hands on, hands off! How can contact centre managers keep an eye on the detail without diving into micromanagement?
- Reward ambition with more progressive career pipelining so agents see your organisation as a career destination rather than a stepping stone
- Support managers to support their teams! Ensure managers have the capacity to cheerlead, maintain motivation, keep agents on target and safeguard the company reputation
17.10 Afternoon Chair’s Closing Remarks & Official Close of Conference
