Q: What is your job title?

A: Customer Contact Manager
 
Q: Tell us a bit about what you do?

A: I manage a team of customer service advisors and complaint advisors to ensure our customer needs are met and dealt with in line with our SLAs and customer experience strategy.
 
Q: How did you get into customer service?

A: I worked for Amey as a Customer Operations Manager in the Shared Service Centre in Speke. I was managing the back-office functions of Amey's Utility contracts (Severn Trent Water, UU, Yorkshire Water and Energy Metering). I had a team of 30 agents and 5 team leaders working over 7 days per week on safe digs, inbound/outbound customer calls, complaints and scheduling. When working for Amey, I worked with EDF, Scottish Power, Severn Trent Water and United Utilities. I managed the customer and scheduling functions for those contracts.
 
Q: What is the definition of excellent customer service to you/What does excellent customer service look like you?

A: Work as a team, listen and share, be friendly, empathetic support, be honest, improve empathy, product knowledge and identify ways to improve processes
 
Q: Why is customer service so important to Halton Housing?

A: Helps you retain customers, boosts employee retention, reinforces company values and brand (improving people's lives), generates referrals, and proactively addresses customer issues
 
Q: How has customer service changed? (i.e. customers are more savvy/expect more. Used to good customer service/more channels to tell you when they’re not happy etc)

A: More channels, there are now more ways to contact us (social media, live chat, telephone, apps and in-person). Customer Service Agents need to be multiskilled in all of these channels to ensure we meet and exceed customer experience
 
Q: What do you think are the most important Customer Service skills for today?

A: Flexibility, empathy, understanding, communication. With Covid19 the world has changed so have many businesses. We have adapted to a new way of working, a more agile and flexible skilled workforce.

Q: How do you ensure that your team develops/retains the skills needed to excel in their customer service role? (i.e. training, shadowing, group reflection etc)

A: At Halton we encourage and promote succession planning, team building activities, coaching, technical training, 121’s and feedback. We meet weekly as a team to review/discuss our performance SLA and discuss any matters. We also complete regular audits on jobs raised and customer calls.

Q: What are the biggest challenges today facing Customer Service/people working in customer service?

A: Being available on all your customers' preferred communication channels and maintaining a low response time on all those channels, including out of hours as people come to expect a 24/7 service.