The Challenge

A global telecommunication collections team that provides support to customers who are struggling to meet their payments faced a large backlog of cases due to inefficient business processes and siloed communications. These inefficiencies were negatively affecting the customer and employee experience and driving up costs. The firm needed a partner to quickly reduce its backlog as well as reorganise and streamline its case management and communication practices.

The Solution

Having delivered excellent results for other lines of business within the telco firm, the client entrusted TTEC with solving this challenge. Our first step was to expand the Specialised Assistance Team’s bandwidth with additional associates and collaborate with internal staff on streamlining processes.

The Specialised Assistance Team received enquiries via various channels such as voice and email from financial counsellors seeking to restructure payment arrangements on behalf of customers. Under the original procedure, every member of the Specialised Assistance Team responded to the enquiries. This created multiple redundancies and delayed responses since team members had to research the case from scratch at every interaction.

We assigned two gatekeepers to take turns screening and responding to all enquiries to eliminate redundancies and ensure that financial counsellors were dealing with the same case manager throughout a case.

We also positioned the Specialised Assistance Team to serve as a one-stop shop for financial counsellors. Gatekeepers and other team members received in-depth training in additional areas to expand the scope of their capabilities. Such areas included gaining expertise in customer accounts to identify and remediate financial over-commitment, as well as handling a wider variety of disputes. Additionally, increased collaboration with the client’s onshore partners enabled the Special Assistance Team to reach out for real-time assistance with complex and unusual enquiries.

The Results

The improvements that TTEC introduced—reorganising, streamlining, and increasing communications and operational efficiencies—quickly delivered significant results. Whereas financial counsellors typically waited 8 to 24 hours for a response, they now receive responses in less than one hour. Over the course of four months, the volume of cases decreased from more than 230 to about 140 and continues to shrink.

And while the client does not measure CSAT at the Special Assistance Team’s level, the overall hardship team has maintained an average 86% CSAT score, which greatly exceeds the client’s target of 75%. The hardship team is also influencing overall credit management NPS which is set at +10 while the team is at +22.