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Building an Award-Winning Contact Centre: A Journey of Transformation

“Moving forward in Customer Contact Centre life rests on focussing on the agent, positioning of new implementations, finding new ways to better serve our customers, whilst grooming a force of positive contact centre heroes,” says Tiaan du Rand. In this Standard Bank Case Study, Tiaan sheds light on iKnow, a tool that has become a central lifestyle hub for contact centre agents, whilst hosting a vast array of miracles for the management team.

by Tiaan du Rand

Tiaan du Rand, Manager, Knowledge Management and Communication, Standard Bank of SA Ltd Tel: +27 11 299 3169 Fax: +27 11 636 2375 Cel: +27 84 926 5377, Tiaan.durand@standardbank.co.za

Imagine, for a minute, the typical contact centre. Supposedly a gray picture of a factory-like setting with hundreds of robotic headset-bearing faces morbidly reading call scripts while tapping away at keyboards.

Watch this picture evolve into happy headset-bearing faces serving customers with vigour, tenacity and energy. This transformation has been underway in the Standard Bank Customer Contact Centre for the past three years, and still going strong.

What lies beneath this type of contact centre is the synchronicity of a complex web of elements working together to create this happy workplace. Elements such as quality management, workforce scheduling, coaching, learning and development, customer experience initiatives, and a vast array of specific reports, just to name a few.      

Everyone who has experience in the magical maze of the contact centre world would agree that this is much more intricate than the average person would ever imagine.  Contact centre managers and team leaders has the daily task to coordinate all the above elements, whilst still dealing with today’s very interesting generation of contact centre agents. 

Often overlooked in the customer contact centre industry are these agents - the real heroes. They are the first point of contact for the customer. To the customer, they are the institution. When reflecting on an efficiently run contact centre, the average service agent should deal with approximately 100 interactions per day.  That equates to 500 interactions per week, 2000 per month. This is the crux: the agent is responsible for 2000 positive customer interactions per month.  Keeping this in mind, Standard Bank started to develop a system with the agent in mind. The agent should feel safe, at home, empowered, involved, appreciated, informed and the environment should cause them to enjoy what they do. The journey was undertaken. »

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