Our customer contact centre, MacquarieHUB began operation in 2010. This serves as the central point of interaction for all of our customers. While other companies are resorting to offshore strategies to reduce costs, Macquarie Telecom has invested $5M in this state-of-the-art, customer contact centre located in Sydney. MacquarieHub is also uniquely positioned within the heart of our corporate headquarters.
Because we know that customer service is key to our success, we are measuring MacquarieHub against the best contact centres in the world. We have invested two years and several million dollars investigating the world’s top contact centres and have adopted world’s best practice in technology, processes, recruiting and people management.
The talent management, measurement and operational processes of this centre are unique in many ways, including:
Domain expertise: customer service professionals or CSPs are hired for their customer service capacity and what we call the customer service gene rather than industry or technical experience. Staff are typically hired from outside of the call centre and telemarketing realm with the key qualification being sharing of their values with ours and the desire to be part of a world class service environment.
Single contact: calls are not passed around between departments, as CSPs take personal ownership of queries and complaints. Armed with technical, product and service knowledge and access to our Operational Support Systems (OSS), each CSP is equipped to effectively handle or to escalate issues quickly to resolve any customer matter. This single contact approach instils customer goodwill and eliminates the phenomenon where customers complain about the process of complaint handling.
Performance objectives: staff are measured by customer satisfaction, first-time-fix and one-contact-resolution criteria, not call volume or call length.
Real-time measurement: customer feedback is obtained and satisfaction measured in real-time. Call centre staff can see their individual Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), live. More than 1,500 customers participate in these monthly surveys with an average score of 4.7 out of 5 over the last 12 months. These surveys provide high statistical validity and rich information to identify and prioritise ongoing improvement opportunities.
Cross-functional engagement: interdepartmental review meetings are held each morning to review, analyse and plan resolution of open tickets. In one year, the volume of open tickets has declined from 400 per day to fewer than 150 as of July 2011.
Training investment: in addition to the company's employee learning and development program, Macquarie invests, on average, $2,000 per customer service professional annually for external training. This investment is a key part of our Macquarie HUB Employee Value proposition and delivers a culture of continuous learning matched to an individual’s development objectives.
Employee engagement: Hewitt measures employee engagement in the form of willingness to say positive things, stay with an organization and strive for excellence. MacquarieHUB achieved an engagement score of 74%, 20% higher than the telecommunications industry average.
