Principality - Contact Strategy review

Principality Building Society (PBS) is a mutual society with a head office in Cardiff and fifty two branches distributed throughout Wales. It provides savings, mortgage and insurance products and services for residential and commercial property purchase and ownership.  PBS has an ongoing commitment improve the way that it does business, including direct channels such as web and telephone, to ensure that it continues to offer the best and most accessible service to customers.

Although it was already operating a contact centre, PBS wanted to increase the quality of interactions with customers as well as improve performance in terms of sales and customer service particularly from the growing direct channel business.  This project would be completed in parallel with the introduction of a new CRM solution that was already underway.

The Accord Partnership carried out a full review of all customer contacts and supporting technologies in the call centre as well as visiting a number of branch locations throughout Wales.  This enabled Accord to define a more effective operating model including recommendations on restructuring the roles and responsibilities within the organisation.  Accord also developed a roadmap for change that could be implemented by PBS to optimise call handling and streamline the whole operation.

The recommendations included the adoption of best practice customer interaction methodologies and the refocusing of staff into teams, with specialists handling the more complex enquiries.  Accord also recommended rationalising the telephone numbers used by customers to contact PBS with a refined numbering strategy that would increase first call resolution and empower contact handlers thus reducing the need to put customers on hold or transfer calls to other staff.  After creating the methodology to move the whole project forward to implementation, Accord obtained full signoff from the Board before handing over the reins to PBS.