How to Decrease Call Volume, Help Customers with Self-Service, and Improve Customer Experience
With Bridgette Dalzell, General Manager, Customer Connection Hubs at Bank of New Zealand
Show Notes
Bridgette Dalzell is the General Manager of Customer Connection Hubs at Bank of New Zealand. She's spent the last 25 years involved in customer experience, customer service, and customer sales. And she's led teams across New Zealand, Australia, India and the Philippines.
Top 3 Tips:
Have a really good data set of understanding why your customers are calling.
Have a team of people dedicated to doing call listening.
And then come up with a strategy around what is your low hanging fruit and how you'll measure it.
You'll Learn:
How Bridgette has dealt with unprecedented high call volume. And how she’s taken 14,000 calls out of her service contact centre in the last few months - while improving customer experience (including for high volume callers) - by pushing customers to self-serve and digital (01:43 and 04:31).
How to address any concerns around the cost of having a transformation team, so you can make a rock-solid business case for having one (08:09).
The way to guarantee your customers' experience is kept top-of-mind in every meeting (10:40).
Connect with Bridgette on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bridgette-dalzell-b582b86/
Get your free copy of Game On here: https://bravatrak.com/game-on-book (you’ll also get the latest podcast episodes sent straight to your inbox).
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and brightest minds in the industry.
I'm Blair Stevenson and I'm the founder of BravaTrak, the High-Performance Coaching System for Contact Centers. Guaranteed to increase your centers' performance by at least 11% within six months, or it's completely free.
Today I'm joined by Bridgette Dalzell, who's the general manager of the Customer Connection Hubs at the Bank of New Zealand, and I'm really excited to have Bridgette on our first podcast as we've known each other for over 20 years. Today she's got some really great tips on how to achieve customer behavior transformation.
So Bridgette, welcome along.
Bridgette Dalzell (00:44)
Thanks Blair, great to be here.
Blair Stevenson (00:47)
Just to start, just tell us a little bit about your background and your expertise.
Bridgette Dalzell (00:51)
Sure. You know I've been involved in customer experience, customer service, customer sales for the last 25 years. I spent a long time at Spark New Zealand leading their contact centers. The last couple years I've been at BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) and prior to that, I was at a financial services organization.
Most of my roles have led teams across New Zealand. My last role was across Australia and India, and at Spark, you know, I lead large teams in the Philippines as well. So national teams, trans-Tasman teams and international teams around customer experience, sales and service.
Blair Stevenson (01:35)
Awesome. Thank you. So in terms of our discussion today, what was the problem or opportunity that you faced and what were some of the implications arising from it?
Bridgette Dalzell (01:43)
Sure. So at BNZ, we've embarked on a journey of customer transformation and improving the customer experience and encouraging customers to go and self-serve, and go digital where possible.
I think the opportunity presented itself for us during our first lockdown. So, you know, we had like many organizations unprecedented call volume, particularly when our branches closed. So we came up with a strategy around IVR (Interactive Voice Response) containment.
So where were there opportunities where we could encourage customers to self-serve and find the information themselves, as opposed to waiting in queue for one of our bankers to answer.
Blair Stevenson (02:34)
Yeah. Cool. So how did you go about addressing that issue?
Bridgette Dalzell (02:38)
Probably one of the first opportunities - and probably one of the key success measures to the whole program - is understanding why your customers are calling. So we did some deep call analysis and a whole lot of call listening to really understand what the key drivers for customers calling were.
You know, as an example, ‘is the information not correct on your company website?’ ‘Is the process that a customer goes through to self-serve too difficult?’ ‘Is there information missing?’
So we did some really great call driver analysis to understand why customers called, and then worked out what were our low hanging fruit around moving customer scenarios to online and digital. And we put a lot of that information right up the front of our IVR.
Blair Stevenson (03:29)
Cool. So as an example, what would be some of that low hanging fruit that you uncovered?
Bridgette Dalzell (03:36)
As an example, we had probably 6,000 to 7,000 customers call us a month on how to change their address for their statement, and email us as well. So we put that up the front of our IVR and said "if you want to do an address change, this is how you do it."
And what we measured was we'd see customers listen to the message, then hang up. So we called that positive abandonment as opposed to an abandoned call where a customer didn't get a positive outcome.
Blair Stevenson (04:07)
Yeah, yeah. I always kind of have that idea that it's the little things that make the biggest difference, and that would be a great example. So what, what was the result of that project? The outcome of the project? I know it's still ongoing, but what are the kind of outcomes or results that you're seeing so far and what have you learned so far out of it?
Bridgette Dalzell (04:31)
For me, transformation of the customer experience is ongoing. It's not just a one-off program that you hit hard, and then you stop. It is a continuation and it's always evolving. Over the last couple months, we've taken 14,000 calls out of our service contact center, where we've seen customers who are regular callers as well.
So one of the other examples, what we did was we really did some analysis around who are the customers that called us 10 times a month or more? And what were those particular customers calling about? We ring fenced those customers. We did an outbound call to them and we encourage them and educated them to go online for the query that they were calling us about.
So we've seen a huge drop-off in our frequent callers. And we've seen a massive uptake of customers moving online and self-serving.
Particularly also, Blair, in our vulnerable customer space in our over-seventies. So during COVID with our branches closing, we put in place a priority line for our customers in the over 70 age bracket. Typically they don't go online. They typically go face-to-face at branch and we've got, you know, over 1500 customers a month or more, in that age bracket now being online and digital, and having the confidence and expertise to now manage their own banking.
Blair Stevenson (06:03)
That's awesome. That's awesome. Because one of the big shifts that obviously is occurring for contact centers is that organizations like the Bank of New Zealand are pushing people to digital, which means that CSRs (Customer Service Representatives) are dealing with more, I guess, more problems. They're dealing with more challenging situations to solve.
And that's reducing the opportunity for people who've got those simple needs to dial in. So it's a really good example of helping people with that transformation to use the digital channel. Fantastic.
So thinking about people in the same situation that you're in, what would be your kind of top three tips to those people?
Bridgette Dalzell (06:47)
So I think one of the first things is understand why your customers are calling. Don't make assumptions. You know, get your data, your data is key in the fact that you do some call listening, and have a team of people dedicated to doing that. So understand the drivers of your customers. Have a really good sample size as your data point, and then work out a plan of how you're going to move those customers into a better experience.
And this isn't about cost saving at all. We never looked at it from a cost saving point of view. This was about driving a better outcome for our customers and ensuring our customers don't wait in queue for a simple transaction that they can actually solve themselves. So I guess my three tips are:
Have a really good data set of understanding why your customers are calling.
Have a team of people dedicated to doing your call listening.
And then come up with a strategy around what is your low hanging fruit and how you'll measure it.
Blair Stevenson (07:56)
Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. So I'm just curious about, obviously there's additional headcount for these types of initiatives. How do you go about justifying that additional headcount?
Bridgette Dalzell (08:09)
It's a really good question, actually. So I've got a transformation team that has got 10 FTE (Full Time Equivalents) in it. And so the purpose of this team is it needs to pay for itself.
So every initiative that we have as part of that program, that is driving a better customer experience - while driving call volume out - what is measured and managed out of that program is offset against the cost of that program.
And that's how we justify it. So for this team, they understand their existence is to improve the customer experience and it's resulting in reduced call volume and wait times.
Blair Stevenson (08:54)
Brilliant. So I'm guessing that's the way that you were kind of addressing any concerns about return on investment.
Bridgette Dalzell (08:59)
Absolutely. Yeah. And that's how we built our business case around having this team as well.
Blair Stevenson (09:06)
Nice, nice. Great tips. So just to finish, what last comments, if any, do you have?
Bridgette Dalzell (09:15)
I think in this very different world we live in, you know, the future of the contact center is key. I think, you know, over the past couple of years, there has been a real push to move interactions and the customer experience online, but there will always be a place for a contact center.
You know, we have a saying at BNZ, 'digital first and human when it matters'.
So, you know, our focus is to improve the customer experience and to make it easier for customers to interact with us, but to have the really valuable conversations and the difficult and complex conversations will always be human when it matters.
So I think about, you know, as you're creating your customer experience of what you want your brand to be in the future - and what you want to be known as - seek your customer feedback.
So 'look through the customer's eyes and work backwards', is something that we've always done and any role that I've been in the organization, it's about looking through the customer's eyes first, get your customers in (to your business), do a research session with them, ask them what they want their customer experience to be. And if you know, you were their organization of choice, what is going to be the optimal customer experience for them and work backwards.
So, you know, I think we often have a chair in the room, an empty chair where the customer is in our meetings. And, you know, so every experience you create, every process change you make, think about what your customer would say about it, how you'll educate your customer, how you'll communicate to your customer. So you know, I think that is key as you go through a transformation initiative.
Blair Stevenson (11:07)
Nice. I think it's a fantastic frame to have an empty chair. Because that just keeps it top of mind for people - 'what are we doing this for?' I think it's lovely. And I think there are a couple of points that you made.
One was about making sure you've got an adequate sample size. So, you know, I think we tend to be highly influenced by stories, individual stories, but actually digging down and making sure you get an adequate sample size, so you can make decisions on the data is super important.
And 'human when it's needed' is a great phrase. So that's brilliant. Thank you Bridgette. So that's all we've got time for today.
Thank you very much to Bridgette for coming on the show. You've got some really useful insights into customer behavior transformation. And for listeners, you'll find a link to the show notes of this podcast in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with Bridgette on LinkedIn, you'll also find a link to her LinkedIn profile in the description there too (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bridgette-dalzell-b582b86/)
Now, if you're tuned in looking for a way to hit your targets without managing by numbers and burning your people out, have I got an offer for you. You're welcome to a free copy of my book, Game On, How to Increase Sales, Productivity, and Customer Experience by Turning Your Managers Into High-Performance Coaches.
The link to that offer is also in the episode description below (https://bravatrak.com/game-on-book).
So that's it from us today, have a productive week.