Our client, a leading telecommunications company, was dissatisfied with the level of customer service provided by their service centres which were outsourced to various parties. An RFP was to be issued in order for a single outsourcing supplier to take over and improve performance; however our client needed assistance to develop their requirements and KPIs for best practice customer service.

Our role was to advise our client regarding options and trade-offs regarding the delivery of great customer service. We enabled our client to make key decisions on the following areas:

• Overall service requirements and approach.
• The required characteristics from service agents – cultural, training, skills, coaching and team structure.
• A pragmatic structure for KPIs and risk/reward to encourage strong customer centricity and a mutually beneficial commercial arrangement.
• Requirements for continuous improvement
• Communication guidelines for agents.
• Pricing model.
• Detailed analysis of call volumes and types.

We also wrote the relevant section of the RFP documents which covered the above.

The RFP was finished on time, and vendor replies were received offering the right level of services and pricing. Ultimately, our client took the decision to in-source, as a result of another project we had also completed for them to assess the feasibility of in-sourcing. (See separate case study)