1. Home
  2. Neighbourhood
  3. Media & Insights
  4. The Blog
  5. TieTa Customer Story: Delivering first-class service during COVID-19

From the blog

TieTa Customer Story: Delivering first-class service during COVID-19

A quote from Tom Horne, Chief Operating Officer.

TieTa is an award-winning provider of outsourced contact centre services based in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Its expert team of agents work with businesses across a range of industries – from financial to automotive services – delivering first-class, omni-channel support to more than 500,000 customers.

We caught up with COO Tom Horne and Operations Director Risto Proosa to hear how the company managed its rapid switch to remote working during the coronavirus lockdown, and why they believe scalability will be the key to their success in the future.

Making the switch

When the pandemic forced businesses into lockdown in March, TieTa was prepared with a flexible working plan. Using Puzzel’s cloud-based Contact Centre solution, agents were simply able to log in from home, taking softphone calls and responding to digital enquiries remotely.

“I think people were scrambling to find home working solutions. We did that very, very well at TieTa. We anticipated it, we did tests. We always test our Business Continuity Plan and we were able to slip straight into that,” Tom explained.

“TieTa transitioned to remote working in just a matter of days and today continues to operate at 100 per cent efficiency.”

“I think it’s a different kind of world now … and the flexibility and the service quality that companies are expected to provide is changing. Switching to homeworking has really shown that we’re able to change and we’re able to still provide great service to all of our clients,” Risto added.

Offering a human touch

During the pandemic, TieTa also understood it would need to adapt its customer experience to support those feeling frightened, frustrated and overwhelmed. While many contact centres turned off voice channels to focus exclusively on e-mail and live chat demand, TieTa knew the importance of offering a human touch.

“Being outsourcers at TieTa, we’ve got clients across financial services. We had to be very, very careful with customers because we understood there was going to be a huge amount of vulnerable customers out there that needed our support,” Tom said. “It’s definitely changed the way that a lot of clients have had to deal with their customers in this tough period, but we’re very proud with our customer forbearance approach,” he added.

“Customer contact doesn’t stop due to COVID. Customers want to speak to businesses and that will never go away. We can automate parts, but companies will always need business with a human touch at the end of the phone, at the end of the email and at the end of the live chat.”

Scaling up success

Following its success during the pandemic, TieTa now plans to make homeworking a permanent part of its business strategy.

“Some agents in particular have really thrived on the extra flexibility … and some efficiencies have improved, so it’s been really, really good to see,” Tom said. “Once COVID-19 blows over, we’ll have a fully operational office, but will we demand that staff work there full-time? No, I don’t think we will. I think we’ll be open to a more permanent flexible working solution going forward.”

TieTa’s ability to scale its services to meet the changing needs of businesses – and to help them respond to unforeseen events – will also be a key focus going forward.

“Across the board, we’ve seen increased customer demand due to the pandemic, and that’s when we’ve been quite proud to offer scalability to our customers,” Tom said.

“Being outsourcers, we really need to scale up sometimes very, very quickly and Puzzel allows us to do that. It’s brilliant with the license cost, it’s brilliant with the ease of the system and the training. It gives us that flexibility to offer our customers the opportunity to scale up and down as much as they like during busy periods,” he added.

You too can achieve success with Puzzel’s cloud-based, omnichannel contact centre solution. Book in your free custom demo here.

You might also like…