Company: EE
Entry submitted by: Ben Kay (BenKay) Head of Digital Strategy & Social
Community: EE Community (Community.ee.co.uk)
Lithy category: The Organization Game Changer
Organization Game Changer: Triage
As part of our drive to become #1 for Service in our sector we recognized a need to make a step change in our social support experience. While our EE Community plays a big part of that step change, we recognized the need to take a step back and operate differently.
Since launching our various social web presences we have suffered from an inefficient, unscalable social support operation. This was leading to response times in excess of 24hrs. This was causing considerable negative sentiment within social, and as a result was unsustainable.
We developed the concept of a triage to be the first point of contact for social customers and direct them to the appropriate destination for their query. The destinations included Digital (to support a wider organizational ambition around driving adoption of self service), Community (to support the Community Strategy), Executive Office (for serious complaints/issues), Brand (for marketing engagement) and Press (for media/journalist queries). We also implemented an escalation to ‘click to chat’ to allow account specific (private) conversations to happen between support agents and customer.
This triage concept would take the operational burden off frontline Customer Service agents (and free them up to deliver their core skills).
The goal was to deliver an efficient, scalable operation that opened up customer interactions to the relevant parts of the business responsible for the interaction. Since we have implemented this new way of working we have seen very dramatic results.
- Average response time decrease from >24hrs to <1hr
- Real-time interactions for marketing
- Real-time interactions for Press (on media interesting topics)
LSW has enabled us to bring to reality our triage concept. We have tried a number of social interaction tools, most of which are aimed solely at a support/contact centre environment. LSW is helping break down organizational silo’s/barriers and allowing front line support agents and head office marketers to collaborate and share the social customer experience seamlessly.
Through clear direction setting, shared purpose and determination we have developed a customer experience that changed our customers experience overnight. Whilst simple, it is proving to be a very effective method of providing a completely new social customer experience, much more akin to customer expectations.
Through the implementation of the social triage we have seen:
- Dramatic reduction in the time to respond to customer interactions – Time to respond has dropped by 95%
- Average Agent Handle Time for Social Interaction down by 8%
Reduction in inbound customer service support calls
- Reduced level of operational cost (numbers confidential)
Organization Game Changer- SocialHub
As part of our launch of a completely new brand in the UK market we set a very clear ambition to deliver the Best Network, Best Service, so customers trust us with their digital lives. This nod to the changing expectations of consumers, and the prevalence of digital within the customer experience. As part of this ambition we developed the ‘Social Hub’. The ambition was to create a capability that provides the organization with real-time social insight, to enable us to act faster and act smarter. This physical focal point for social within the organization, not only tracks real-time social conversations, but turns that into actionable insight for the business, from customer services to marketing to press and product development, the insights we gather and provide are acting as a catalyst to enable the organization to work better.
We see Lithium Community and Social Web as fundamental tools to enable us to manage our social conversations, the tools empower staff from across the organization to engage with customers in a manner never before seen.
The Social Hub has fundamentally changed how we operate as an organization. Whether it is from a large product launch to crisis management, the Hub provides physical (and virtual) orchestration of the social experience. Bringing together Digital, Brand, Marketing, CS, Legal and Press teams in a highly efficient, factually informed manner to make timely business decisions.
Watch our video about the EE Social Hub: http://vimeo.com/63160747
Through the orchestration of the social experience we have seen a significant cultural change in how social is managed, with historically disparate departments now working collaboratively on the entire social customer experience.
