2023 Customer Awards: Virgin Plus - Best-in-Class: Digital Customer Service
Company: Virgin Plus
Company background: Virgin Plus is a provider of postpaid and prepaid wireless voice, text and data communications services throughout Canada. They also offer home Internet and TV services in select areas of Ontario and Quebec. Virgin Plus refers to our customers a “Members” and offers a robust benefits program which provides Members with special offers, discounts, and VIP experiences. Virgin Plus continues its growth and innovates in the telecommunications space providing reliable, affordable TV, internet and Mobile options to Canadians coast to coast.
Contact: Darrell Harrison
Title: Community Manager
Related URLs:
Website: Virginplus.ca & Benefits.virginplus.ca
Facebook: Facebook.com/virginplus
Instagram: Instagram.com/virginplus
Twitter: Twitter.com/virginplus & Twitter.com/VirginPlusCare
Community: VirginPlus.ca/forum
LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/company/virginplus
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Digital Customer Service
1. What challenges did your organization face that required a digital strategy? Provide details on the issues you were trying to resolve or the goals you were trying to achieve. (e.g. reducing handle time, improving CSAT, reducing per-interaction costs, revenue growth, cost savings, etc.)
Our Virgin Plus experts are skilled in both mobility and household services. Initially, we faced challenges in accurately determining the handling time for each service, making it difficult to identify which service required the most time from our agents. However, with the implementation of the Khoros queuing system, we were able to create separate queues for mobile and residential services. This allowed us to automatically or manually route conversations to their respective queues.
By implementing this system, we were able to conduct continuous deep dives and pinpoint areas where our Experts lacked knowledge. We took immediate action to bridge these knowledge gaps by providing the necessary training to our team.
Furthermore, we have made significant advancements in our self-serve account management and self-repair diagnostic apps. These developments were aimed at reducing the number of calls into our Member Care Centre. To increase awareness about these tools, we have implemented effective social strategies. We leverage platforms like Facebook by creating engaging content on a carousel and having moderators invite our members to utilize these tools. Our ultimate goal is to empower our Members to take control of their accounts and services, as our top priority is always putting our Members first. During the time we ran this campaign, we’ve noticed an increase in adoption of self serve solutions and a decrease in calls and chats.
Virgin Plus Community June 2022 to May 2023 - Focus was to grow Community user participation and content in the Community (both Virgin Plus & user generated) to build out the Solution and How To base that was connected with Khoros Care in order to allow Social Agents to search and link FB, Twitter and Instagram customers; thus providing self-serve oppourtunities, education, contact deflection/lower contact rate. User participation helps lower the Community TAR (Time to Average Response), thus generating more activity and solutions-feeding the content/solution machine.
2. Which Khoros elements did you implement as part of your digital solutions? Include details on the channels or tools you added and how your solution was unique and innovative.
Community: As detailed above we connected the Virgin Plus' Community's TKB/How To's and Solutions to Khoros Care to allow the Agents to search and select related or helpful topics and articles to Social Media customers.
In May 2023 the Virgin Plus Community began a Community blog with content focused on helpful and related content found throughout the Community, highlighting new tools, events and marketing opportunities relevant to the Community user, while also partnering with Virgin Plus Member Benefits.
3. What quantifiable results were achieved? Please include key success metrics. (e.g. revenue growth, cost reduction, CSAT, call deflection, agent efficiency, response speed, resolution rate, etc.)
We were able to move the needle on some significant metrics. While Topics and Posts remained flat at ~900 Topics and 2.2K Posts created during September 2021-May 2022 and June 2022-May 2023; real growth happened elsewhere as we nearly doubled Accepted Solutions from 90 to 173 (+92%). While the quantity of Topics and Posts did not increase, the quality of the content did, and that changed how Community users interacted with the Virgin Plus Community. Solution Views increased from 14.3K to 82.8K (+479%), Page Views from 453K to 463K (+2%), Visits from 184K to 219K (+19%), Unique Visits from 155K to 180K (+16%), Member Logins from 26.7K to 35.5K (+33%) and lowered Time to Avg. Response from 2,851 min. to 1,966 min. (-31%).
Special Thanks: Luke Wolters, Rob Delbello
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