Innovation Awards 2010 shortlist demonstrates exceptional bottom-line improvement in difficult times

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December 2009

Nineteen diverse organizations reached the closely-fought shortlist for the
Contact Centre Innovation Awards 2010, today. For the very first time, the
list includes innovations that also put the customer at the heart of
outbound and back office operations, with many driving performance
improvement that works across the entire customer contact operation.

Presented by the Professional Planning Forum, the winners are announced at
Customer Contact Planning 2010 on April 19-20 in London, where the finalists
will all be speaking about how they achieved such outstanding results.

“These organisations have achieved exceptional bottom-line improvement in
difficult times”, explains Paul Smedley, Executive Director of the
Professional Planning Forum. “They’ve done this by understanding what the
customer really needs and they’ve stripped out the cost of other things that
were just getting in the way. For the first time we can see that a real
end-to-end customer contact operation is beginning to emerge.”

The full list of finalists is: Anglian Water Services, Aviva UK General
Insurance, British Gas – Cardiff, Dorset County Council, Glasgow City
Council, Gold Medal Travel, Harrow Council, HM Revenue & Customs, Invesco
Perpetual, L&G Retail Savings Operations, Nationwide Building Society –
Regional Brands, Northants Police, Orange UK, Prolog Logistics, RSA,
Scottish Power, Shop Direct, Ventura (Speech Analytics and Ventura Business
Solutions (Outbound).

“Fantastic, a real privilege” was the reaction of Ray Browne, Performance
Improvement Manager at Shop Direct. Adrian Hawes, Resource Optimisation
Manager at Aviva said their success was due to “perseverance” while Derek
Maitland, MI and Planning Manager of Glasgow City Council described the
“huge amount of work that had gone into their initiative.” He was “looking
forward to sharing it with others” through the Professional Planning Forum’s
best practice programme.

The record number in the shortlist reflects the depth of quality and the
fantastic breadth of entries this year. For the first time, 3 outbound
entries demonstrate how to put the customer at the heart of an outbound
campaign – focusing the calling list on people who want to talk to you. The
four back office innovations cover industry-leading achievements in
planning, process improvements and delivery of effective end-to-end service.
The five public sector innovations include three local councils, Northants
Police and HMRC. Other finalists include the implementation of speech
analytics technology, the engagement of front-line staff in adapting to
change despite recessionary cut-backs and innovations that make fundamental
changes in the areas of resource planning and management information.

The 2010 Judging Panel includes 10 independent experts, many of who are
previous award winners or finalists themselves:

. Cathy Eastwood, Customer Services Manager, Canterbury City Council

. Chris Collins, Customer Service Centre Manager, Coventry Building
Society

. Grant Holden, Resource Planning Manager, HEROtsc

. Helen Booth, Head Of National Operations Centre, NHS Direct

. Kevin Beattie, Resource Planning Manager, QVC

. Paul Burgess-Clements, Head of Operations, Hastings Insurance
Services Limited

. Peter Massey, Managing Director, Budd UK Ltd

. Richard Brimble, Customer Relations Director, Veolia Water Three
Valleys

. Steve Borg, National Planning Manager, AA

. Tracy Rice, Operational Planning Manager, QVC

The judges visit all finalists in February or March for a more in-depth
evaluation, and each finalist is asked to make a commitment to host a site
visit in June or September and to talk about their work at Customer Contact
Planning 2010 on 19-20 April where the awards are presented. Each short
listed nomination is written up and added to a much-consulted case study
series; the 2010 case studies will also form part of the Planning Forum’s
2010 Best Practice Guide.

Further information can be found at:
http://www.planningforum.co.uk/conference/innovation-awards/2009-finalists.a
spx and full details will be available after judging in April 2009.

For further details contact:

Katherine Potter, [email protected]

Or Paul Smedley, [email protected]

Tel. 0333 123 5960

The Professional Planning Forum (www.planningforum.co.uk) is the independent
industry body for effective resourcing and planning in the contact centre
industry, working across all industry sectors to provide specialist support
for contact centre professionals. Championing the importance of these
critical skills, the Planning Forum is widely recognized for its best
practice research and case studies, as well as the results-focused nature of
its professional development training and in-company workshops. The Planning
Forum runs the Contact Centre Innovation Awards and Contact Centre Planning
conference, to be held in London on 19-20 April 2010.

Previous winners of the Contact Centre Innovation Awards

The Innovation of the Year Award 2009 was presented to QVC for the
impressive and pioneering planning initiatives that cut occupancy by 15% in
the call centre, dropped agency hours by 23% in the distribution centre and
cut team leader admin from 50% to 11% of their working week. EDF Energy won
the 2008 award for their ground-breaking new end-to-end service delivery for
new customers, Salford City Council in 2007 for their Think Customer
initiative, Tesco in 2006 for a programme of change that took the stress out
of their Christmas peak period and HBOS in 2005 for developing initiatives
to improve work-life balance and schedule efficiency.

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