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Simply Business overcomes adherence challenges with WFM

Simply Business is one of the UK’s biggest business insurance providers, specialising in public liability insurance for SMEs. They understand that every business is unique, whether they’re a self-employed cleaner, tradesman, beauty therapist or dog walker, people want specialist small business insurance tailored to their needs and great customer experience to go with it – they go hand in hand.

We caught up with Joshua Kirkbride, to find out just how important delivering great customer experience is to Simply Business and how Puzzel has helped them on their journey.

The power of data

Since launching the business back in 2005, Simply Business now provides public liability insurance for 600,000+ small businesses and landlords across Britain. They have over 200 agents based in Northampton to keep up with the demand and maintain the high level of customer service they pride themselves on.

Simply Business started working with Puzzel in 2019, using their native cloud Workforce Management (WFM) solution* in its Contact Centre.

“Prior to using WFM, we had never used a WFM solution and as such had no insight into our consultants’ workload. We wanted to be able to target and manage our consultants time and conducted tests using some spreadsheets. We estimated that our adherence was around 50% and immediately knew we would benefit from a WFM solution.”

After running a thorough market assessment, Simply Business selected WFM because it was fast to set-up, easy to use and our powerful technology provides a multi-skill, multi-media scheduling system which gives them full control. They appreciated Puzzel’s agile and data-centric focus and were able to see results within as little as two weeks.

“We saw the value of WFM immediately because of how agile and simple the product is – it made deployment much quicker than anticipated. We noticed efficiencies where we were under or overstaffed at certain parts of the day. We were then able to proactively amend shifts and conduct rotor reviews accordingly. This resulted in more engaged agents and happier customers.”

Adapting to change

At a time when COVID-19 has forced many contact centre agents to work from home, leaving them isolated from colleagues, the spotlight has been fixed on employee engagement, exposing gaps in existing strategies, processes and technology.

Josh shared Simply Business’ three-stage strategy for their agents to return to their Northampton call centre and how they’re now much more flexible when it comes to office work.

“It’s clear the pandemic has accelerated remote working and that a large proportion of us are both happy and productive with our working from home set-ups. We’ve gone above and beyond to make sure everyone has the tools and support needed to make the transition as easy as possible.”

“Puzzel has enabled us to highlight gaps where we can engage with our consultants and the wider workforce to improve agent wellbeing. We have assessed where our weekly patterns were and closed at certain points during the week where we know we have the most consultants vs the least customers and utilised that time to do a number of team morale boosting activities such as award ceremonies.”

Customer Experience or Agent happiness – the perfect pair

Both customer service and agent wellbeing are paramount to Simply Business’ success. By using WFM, it has enabled them to make sure their agents are happy and productive. This resulted in providing faster, more effective solutions to their customers’ problems.

“My favourite part of WFM is the forecasting tools. WFM makes it easy to extract any part of the data you want and manipulate it. Our consultants now have an easy view of what their day looks like. I’m able to help them manage their days accordingly and we can plan around holidays and life at home.”

WFM’s intuitive solution design makes this process straightforward for both first-time analysts and established resource professionals. With RTA, Simply Business has gained insight into agent performance to support real-time decision making, helping their agents grow and flourish.

“We’re looking forward to seeing how tools such as WFM will allow us to continue to monitor our data and take immediate action to provide the highest possible service level for our customers as we continue to adapt to this new normal.”

Don’t just take Simply Business’ word for it, try WFM out for yourself.

*Previously U-WFM.

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