Home Group recently implemented a new contact center solution that combines software developed by Technology Services Group (TSG) and Nintex-based workflows. As a result, the organization is saving costs on agent training and has a much better rate of resolving problems on the first try.
Based in Newcastle in England’s North East England region, Home Group Limited is a charity and registered with the government as a provider of social housing. It manages 55,000 homes where over 120,000 people in England, Scotland, and Wales live.
TSG is also based in the same area, and provides custom IT solutions and tech support for businesses. Nintex is based in Seattle, and develops workflow automation solutions. Several representatives from one of its offices in Australia traveled to the Home Group and TSG offices to learn more about the new call center solution.
A big benefit cited from the integrated TSG-Nintex system for Home Group it likely comes from cost savings. Many of the support calls it receives ask for help with home repairs and in the past providing assistance required some level of technical expertise on the part of the agent. Since expertise varies from agent to agent, getting effective help rested on the caller’s luck at getting someone knowledgeable to take their call.
This problem is exacerbated by high turnover rates. According to David Filwood, the principal consultant with TeleSoft Systems, this is a global problem. The U.S. has a turnover rate of 33 percent; the rest of the world ranges from as low as 20 percent in the E.U. to as high as 67 percent in the Philippines.
In an environment where expertise can vary and businesses pay considerable costs retraining due to turnover, as Mike Fitzmaurice, Vice President of Workflow Technology, Nintex described in a special guest posting on TMC’s InfoTech site recently, workflow automation like that provided by Nintex really can save a lot of money. Agents do not need extensive training, so turnover is less of a factor. This leads to reduced training costs and labor costs from paying a premium for subject matter experts.
The TSG-Nintex model can be applied to any contact center. There would be some upfront costs customizing workflows to each specific business, but after that process is complete, and as the partners say and the Home Group deployment demonstrates, savings can begin to accrue almost immediately.