Here are some examples of
As Lotto discovered when the move to level four lockdown was announced, having an established online store was only half the equation.
Lotto’s Head of Customer Service Peter Cooke explains how, with the total closure of its retail outlets, Lotto made sure it stayed connected with its customers.
Peter says: “Taking the biggest part out of our distribution model was a big change. Hypothetically, 1% of active players online will need help, so if you have 200,000 playing, you’d expect 2000 calls.
“When you factor in people who are new to the platform, you’d expect calls to go through the roof. So the question was, ‘How can we support this at very short notice and still resolve every customer enquiry?’
“We needed to make sure everyone who wanted to play could play, both for our customers, and for the charities who receive 100% of Lotto NZ profits. That is our core purpose, to make a difference to communities all over New Zealand. During this time, we know these causes need our support more than ever.”
“I reached out to John and said: ‘I need 30 people by tomorrow!’ At 4 o’clock on Friday, we appointed Telnet. By the next morning 35 agents had completed their training and were on the phones by 10.30am. By the time we had our Saturday night Lotto draw, Telnet had managed 1000 calls with a 96% resolution rate. It was an amazing achievement.”
Z Energy are serious about their promise “Z is for New Zealand” so when they purchased the downstream assets of Shell New Zealand in 2010 and later rebranded to Z Energy, one of their very first moves was to bring the contact centre home from the Philippines. Z Energy selected Telnet for this important role because of our close alignment with the Z Energy philosophy of being “Kiwi-As” and our well-proven ability to provide exceptional customer service.
Since those early days, Telnet has remained a close strategic partner for Z Energy. Within 4 months, the contact centre was moved halfway round the world and transformed into a personalised customer engagement hub fuelled by agents who embodied what would later be called the “Z Factor” of being courageous, down to earth, fun loving and refreshing. We quickly expanded to take on Z Energy’s Master Data Maintenance function, social media management and managing their thousands of Z Card accounts. In 2016 we were also appointed to manage the contact centre for Minitankers, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Z Energy providing fuel delivery services.
While Z’s contact centre was based in Manila, staff training took up to 5 weeks. Using our own training materials, and the same Telnet built technology Z Energy have adopted into their in-house operations, we were able to shave training time down to just three days. Additionally, we reduced staffing numbers and costs by more than 50%, all while increasing first call resolution rates and customer satisfaction levels.
When Z Energy purchased Caltex New Zealand in 2016, they once again trusted Telnet to handle the complex migration of the Caltex contact centre from the Philippines to Telnet’s centre in New Zealand. Working under strict secrecy because of the sensitivities around the acquisition of a competitor, Telnet worked closely with Caltex and Z Energy to re-engineer contact centre processes and conduct a data migration that needed to happen overnight on the cutover day. Now, with the Caltex contact centre integrated with the Z Energy centre, we’re working on developing shared processes that will further reduce costs while maintaining differentiation between the two brands.
With more than 140 Service stations and 70 truck stops, Caltex has been helping Kiwis get where they need to go for almost 80 years. They are dedicated to providing exceptional service and making things easier and more memorable for their customers.
In June 2016, Z Energy announced the purchase of Caltex New Zealand and Telnet was given the task of migrating the Caltex contact centre operation into Z Energy’s business. Operating under the thick blanket of secrecy required when purchasing from a large competitor, Telnet put together a team to work alongside Z Energy and create a personalised customer engagement hub for their new Caltex brand.
Just like Z Energy, Caltex had previously based their contact centre in the Philippines. Using our industry leading technology and unique training methods, when the Caltex contact centre closed at the end of the day on the 31st May 2016 in Manila, Telnet managed to seamlessly move all required data half way around the world to open the lines afresh in New Zealand the next day.
Feeling that Telnet accurately embodied the Caltex vision, our relationship and responsibilities rapidly grew to encompass all Caltex customer interactions including managing their social media pages, StarCard programme and more with some new and exciting developments from Z Energy coming in 2019.
Vector is the largest electricity and gas distributor in New Zealand with a vision to create a new energy future. Striving to challenge and reinvent the way communities and businesses are powered and connected so they can grow and thrive, Vector is both outward and forward looking.
Since 1999 Telnet has provided call centre services to Vector and in an industry that requires constant attention and fast action, every call has the potential to be an emergency and in times of large-scale power outages call volumes can massively increase. That’s why Telnet developed a call avalanche interception system that automatically presents outage announcements to callers for their area. This significantly reduces the number of calls that need to be handled by human agents.
The biggest expense for many contact centres is labour and for most, it simply isn’t feasible to have extra staff waiting around in case of emergency. But we believe labour is only expensive if agents aren’t busy. As well as employing a strong league of homeworkers ready to leap into action at only a moment’s notice, Telnet developed a shared resources model so that instead of being dedicated to one client, our agents can service customer interactions for several clients at once, dramatically reducing idle time and allowing teams to scale seamlessly to cover fluctuating demands.
With our steady partnership of almost 20 years, Telnet works closely with Vector to continuously innovate and improve the way their customers are served.
