Industry news

Across a multitude of sectors, service providers are facing increased competition and regulatory pressures, with the aim of driving higher levels of customer satisfaction. In finance, the new open banking initiative, introduced by the UK Government, has resulted in a shift towards increased customer transparency, encouraging competition into a market that was previously closed to all but the largest of entrants.

Meanwhile, Energy UK announced that more than 5.5 million energy customers switched electricity supplier during 2017. In addition, the regulator, Ofgem, is capping the price of standard variable (SVT) and default tariffs and encouraging customers to shop around for better deals. Therefore, the key question for service providers across sectors is how to attract new customers and retain current ones in an increasingly competitive and regulated marketplace?

The place to start is around customer interaction and communication, which is key to meeting the expectations of discerning customers. However, regular service rankings and complaints data issued by regulators, including the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Ofgem and Ofwat, all serve to demonstrate the scale of the challenge when it comes to customer engagement.

Providers must ensure a high standard of quality assurance when handling customer interactions in the first instance, reducing the number and complexity of complaints that often result in unnecessary costs or damage to reputation. Effective customer contact is a crucial opportunity to improve satisfaction and retention levels, while simultaneously attracting new customers who are seeking a better level of service. Often, working with an external partner to deliver these outcomes ensures an objective assessment of areas for improvement and focus.

In addition, putting effective contingency plans in place for sudden and unforeseen spikes in customer queries and complaints should be an important part of a service provider’s preparation. For instance, the surges in complaints Ofwat received as a result of the ‘Beast from the East’ and the summer heatwave, should act as a wake-up call for water firms to prepare for more extreme instances of weather and the customer interactions that will ultimately follow.

Turning to the world of retail banking, app-based challenger banks have demonstrated that customer service teams can be available immediately at customers’ fingertips, and traditional banks need to keep up with this digitised, customer-first approach. It is imperative service providers embrace technological solutions and operational improvements to better handle customer complaints, resulting in an enhanced, streamlined experience. Complaints are raw, direct interactions with customers and should be treated as valuable sources of information about business services and processes, highlighting potential trends to learn from and address.

All firms should routinely review complaint paths to analyse the causes, not just the symptoms, and identify any particular business processes that may be causing problems. It is essential to have sufficiently granular management information (MI) on the complaint caseload to be able to address systemic issues. Where there are particularly high levels of complexity in complaints – for example, challenges around vulnerable customers – it’s important to consider putting in place new processes and experienced teams to focus on effectively finding an appropriate resolution, while upskilling and training existing teams to ensure they are prepared for future issues.

In addition, the correct outsourcing partner can deliver collaborative expertise when a company needs it most. A high-quality provider should offer effective root cause analysis (RCA), which allows companies to identify problem products and services that may be driving complaints. By fixing problems internally and creating an environment in which issues are identified and rectified before they escalate, firms are able to look beyond symptoms and see genuine improvements in business performance and for customers.

Switching providers is easy and encouraged, but service providers must cut through the noise and differentiate themselves from the competition by providing a positive customer experience, which is something increasingly sought by consumers. It is time to take stock and reassess how customers and their complaints are dealt with, treating each one as an opportunity to build brand loyalty and improve consumer retention.

Huntswood can relieve the pressure of handling large volumes of complaints and other forms of inbound customer contact and provide its clients with a wide range of services that deliver good customer outcomes and business efficiencies.

London, 8 October 2018: Working with Thoughtonomy, ESNEFT has cut the time taken to process the first stage of each GP referral from 15-20 minutes down to five minutes. The program will eliminate the need for staff to spend more than 100 hours a week processing paperwork and instead ensures referrals are actioned 24/7.

The intelligent automation program, which has been running since July 2018, is the first of its kind within the NHS and is initially being deployed in five specialist clinical units – Neurology, Cardiology, Urology, Nephrology and Haematology. Within the first 3 months, the Trust released more than 500 hours of medical secretaries’ time and estimates it will also save £220,000 in associated direct costs by July 2019.

Darren Atkins, Deputy Director of ICT at ESNEFT, said: “We’re delighted with the results we’ve realized so far and are hugely excited about the potential benefits of automating more processes across our Trust. When you look at the time and cost savings we’ve already banked within just one specific area of our operations, you start to get an idea of how intelligent automation can drive transformation on a huge scale within the NHS.”

Using the Thoughtonomy Virtual Workforce® platform, three virtual workers at Ipswich Hospital actively monitor incoming referrals from the national GP Electronic Referral Service (eRS) in real-time, 24 hours a day. As soon as a referral is received, the virtual worker reads the content and extracts the reason for referral. It retrieves all relevant referral data and supporting clinical information such as scan and blood test results from disparate sources, before merging everything into a single pdf document. The virtual worker then uploads the document into the Trust’s administrative systems using highly secure smart card technology and alerts the lead consultant that the referral is ready for review and grading.

Prior to the automation program, medical secretaries were responsible for processing referrals manually, downloading and printing documents, which they then scanned into a new document. In a large Trust such as ESNEFT, which deals with around 2,000 referrals per week, this was a huge drain on medical secretaries’ time.

According to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), automation could save the NHS up to £12.5bn a year, the equivalent of 10% of its annual budget. In addition, it is estimated that a further £6bn could be saved through automation in social care. The recent Darzi Review of Health and Care called on healthcare bodies to ‘embrace full automation to release time to care’ as part of a 10 Point Plan to future-proof health and care services in the UK.

Terry Walby, CEO & Founder of Thoughtonomy, said: “Intelligent Automation has a massive role to play in streamlining time-consuming and inefficient processes across the NHS. By absorbing a wide range of time-intensive, repetitive tasks, we can unburden staff from administration and allow them, instead, to focus on delivering the excellent quality of care upon which we all rely. We’re delighted to be working with forward-thinking NHS Trusts, such as ESNEFT, who are championing the use of AI and automation technology in order to deliver real benefits to hardworking frontline staff while reducing costs. This, in turn, translates into a better patient experience for all.”

Frontline staff at ESNEFT have welcomed the new automated process. Dr Petr Pokorny, a Staff Grade Neurologist, said: “It allows for a more efficient, fluent flow of work, as it’s easier to deal with five new referrals every morning rather than a huge pile of 35 referrals once a week. What’s more, we now have our medical secretaries fully focused on the things that make a real difference to our staff and patients.”

The new automated referral process supports ESNEFT’s obligations under the Standard Contract for 2018/19 to process all referrals via the Electronic Referral Service (eRS), and to optimize its operations in line with the Paper Switch Off program, which comes into force on 1st October 2018.

Thoughtonomy enables organizations to enhance the productivity of their workforce through the intelligent automation and digitization of knowledge work. It uses AI and robotic process automation software to emulate how people work, allowing companies to add flexible resources to their team without disruption and rapid ROI.

Bangalore, India, London and Sheffield, United Kingdom – September 21, 2018: Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced partnerships with two leading UK academic institutions – King’s College London and Sheffield Hallam University, for strengthening STEM education in state schools in the United Kingdom.

Wipro will partner with King’s College London, to support the development of the first Master of Arts in STEM Education in the UK, and Sheffield Hallam University to offer the ‘Wipro Teacher Fellowship’ and ‘Wipro Teacher Mentor’ programmes. Both initiatives aim to provide high quality continuing professional development to early and mid-career educators, to address the shortfall and high turnover of STEM teachers in the UK.

Wipro will support King’s College London in developing the curriculum for a proposed Master of Arts in STEM education course, which will take a blended learning approach, involving face-to-face as well as online learning. The company will also offer bursaries to cover up to 80% of tuition fees, to ensure accessibility of the course for diverse cohorts of in-service teachers and educators from within and outside London. There will be a strong focus on attracting teachers from Opportunity Areas. Wipro will also support Sheffield Hallam University to launch and run the ‘Wipro Teacher Fellowship’ and ‘Wipro Teacher Mentor’ programmes. The 18-months programmes, which will commence in January 2019, and will support early career teachers of STEM subjects and STEM teacher mentors from schools in Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley, Doncaster and Derbyshire.

Both partnerships will address crucial issues in the UK by generating more interest in STEM subjects, developing higher standards of teaching, and investing in teacher retention, especially in the national ‘social mobility cold spots’.

London, UK and Boulder, Colorado: Eggplant, the provider of user-centric, intelligent testing and performance solutions, has released Eggplant RPA: an intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution, harnessing Eggplant’s unique and patented Digital Automation Intelligence (DAI) capabilities.

DAI was designed initially for test automation, however it has evolved into something that can automate anything a person can do, including intelligently understanding and acting on screen images and text and driving any application through keyboard and mouse inputs. Eggplant’s unique automation technology is already widely used for RPA use cases across a variety of industry sectors. These use cases range from database migration and audit trails for federal organizations, to security patches for hospital servers, to marketing automation. Eggplant has also used RPA to convert and migrate over 500,000 files for a document management platform, speeding up processes and reducing mundane, repetitive tasks for employees without the risk of human error during manual entry.

Antony Edwards, CTO of Eggplant commented “Although the Robotic Process Automation industry is fairly new, Eggplant has a long heritage in automating the un-automatable. Our customers have naturally used Eggplant for all kinds of automation including RPA and so it is was listening to our customers and looking at their use cases, that lead us to create Eggplant RPA. When faced with the prospect of RPA, many organizations believe that it is too technical and that a lot of developers need to be involved. However, with the powerful modelling and fusion automation of Eggplant RPA, we are proving this is simply not the case.”

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LONDON, England – September 20, 2018 -- RingCentral UK, Ltd., a leading provider of enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG), has been selected by Pharmacy2U, the UK's largest online pharmacy, as its central communication platform to help it deliver a truly customer-centric contact centre experience to support its rapid growth.

Pharmacy2U helps over 240,000 people across the country manage their NHS repeat prescriptions. Set up by a team of pharmacists in 1999, Pharmacy2U was a founding partner to the NHS in developing the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).

“We are adding around 7,000 patients per week, which is the equivalent of 16 new High Street pharmacies opening each month, and our aim is to allow people to contact us using the method that suits them best, whether that’s by phone, email, or webchat,” said Andy Williams, Director of Customer Care for Pharmacy2U. “With RingCentral, we have an innovative and industry-proven platform that will allow us to deliver a truly unified communication experience and continue to deliver the highest levels of customer service while driving efficiency across the business.”

RingCentral Contact Centre™ is an omnichannel solution that helps people using Pharmacy2U to choose their preferred method of communicating, via voice, chat, SMS, email, and more. The platform includes intelligent IVR and self-service options that are tightly integrated with smart routing functionality to help patients connect more quickly to the advisor who can best handle their needs. The platform also includes tools to help Pharmacy2U optimise staff scheduling and improve contact centre efficiencies. Pharmacy2U is already using RingCentral Glip to help manage the system integration and migration project.

“Pharmacy2U is an innovator in the health industry that is making a real difference to people across the country,” said Steven Rafferty, Regional Vice President of Enterprise Sales, EMEA at RingCentral. “We’re proud to help them deliver a seamless patient experience through our open and flexible platform. We look forward to identifying new ways to partner with Pharmacy2U as they continue to expand.”

ABSL have announced their jury for the upcoming ABSL Diamonds Awards on the 5th December. The jury has been comprised of four members including President and CEO of the Global Sourcing Association Kerry Hallard and Christian Mertin, Global Advisory Solutions Leader at EY.

ABSL Diamonds is the most prestigious sector awards, recognizing companies which implemented the most innovative projects enhancing their business and strengthening the business services sector’s position as the powerhouse of the economy. Every year the aim is to identify successful activities in business services sector, promote best practices, encourage and inspire other companies to follow the best ones.

UiPath, Romania’s first IT unicorn, tripled its value in six months after receiving $225 million in a new funding round from Sequoia Capital and Google’s CapitalG, the WSJ reports. The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software provider, currently a market leader, began as a Bucharest-based startup founded by a team of ten led by Daniel Dines, the company’s CEO and Marius Tirca (CTO).

The new funding round, led by Sequoia Capital and Capital G, comes six months after the company raised $153 million from Accel, Capital G and KP, and saw its valuation shoot to $1 billion, achieving unicorn status. So far, the company has received USD 400 million in funding.

"After years toiling in obscurity, three startups have suddenly hit the jackpot in a corner of the enterprise-software market sprinkled with artificial intelligence,” the WSJ writes about UiPath Inc., Blue Prism Group PLC and Automation Anywhere Inc. “Now they are racing to one-up each other to appear the market leader.”

NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of cloud contact centre and inside sales solutions, today announced that SecOps firm Rapid7 has selected the NVM Platform to deliver a personalised, exceptional experience to its globally expanding customer base.

Rapid7 powers the practice of SecOps by delivering shared visibility, analytics and automation that unites security, IT and DevOps teams. Headquartered in Boston, Rapid7 serves more than 7,100 customers in 120+ countries, including 55 percent of the Fortune 100.

Rapid7 selected NewVoiceMedia’s cloud contact centre solution for its integration with the organisation’s CRM system, which will enable the service team to instantly access customer engagement histories and personalise each interaction. With service agents located around the globe, Rapid7 is also leveraging NVM’s global call routing architecture, Global Voice Assurance. It will allow the service team to manage its resources across the globe as a single entity, reducing customer wait times while ensuring reliable call quality and service availability for calls in remote regions.

The NVM Platform will also provide a real-time window into Rapid7’s entire support operation, with automatic call logging, recording and customisable reporting features that will allow the support team to understand where improvement opportunities exist.

“Rapid7 is deeply committed to providing our customers with a personalised and exceptional experience every time they interact with our organisation, our products, and our services”, says Rajeev Jaswal, CIO at Rapid7. “We needed a reliable cloud contact centre solution that would integrate seamlessly with our CRM, and, NewVoiceMedia met those needs”.

Chris Haggis, SVP Customer Success at NewVoiceMedia, adds, “We’re delighted to be working with Rapid7 and look forward to seeing the company transform its customer service and business efficiencies. Customer experience is becoming the primary tool for companies to differentiate, and NVM will help Rapid7 outcompete on CX by making every conversation great. Additionally, our true cloud solutions are completely flexible and scalable and will continue to support the business throughout its future expansion".

LONDON, Hotellobot (07/09/18)- Hotellobot is an ingenious guest information service software that can be paired with Hotellobot Robot Hardware to make the world’s first and only personal hotel concierge robot.

Hotellobot Software can be used in conjunction with Amazon Dot Voice Hardware, Amazon Spot Screen Hardware or Hotellobot Robot Hardware to provide an exceptional, user-friendly, guest information system. With a vocal command or touch of the screen, depending on which hardware is used, Hotellobot is able to provide guests with information specific to their hotel stay - including menus and timetables.

It is the combination of Hotellobot Software and Hotellobot Robot Hardware that provides an altogether unique concierge assistant to guests and staff alike - the first of its kind worldwide. Hotellobot Robot Hardware can be connected to a network of staff smart watches, allowing guests to request concierge services from the comfort of their room. The conservation of resources and staff time as a result of the communication between Hotellobot Software, Hotellobot Robot Hardware, and staff smart watches will be unprecedented.

Data collected from this unique network will produce invaluable information regarding guest requests, and assist hoteliers in projecting and implementing the most economical direction of employee and resource.

Hotellobot is a multifaceted, unique software and robot hardware, that will provide support to guests, staff, and hoteliers alike. Hotellobot will bring an adroit, previously unchartered dimension to concierge and guest services. Technology in hotel rooms is a step towards a more efficient, cutting-edge business model. The 24 - hour, unlimited nature of Hotellobot’s functionality will transform the accessibility of guest services, as well as eradicate unnecessary calls to reception desks.

Arvato CRM Solutions has been named as a ‘Leader’ in an extensive vendor evaluation report for Digital Customer Experience Services from NelsonHall, the leading business process services and IT services research and analysis firm.

The NelsonHall report evaluates global outsourcing vendors on their ability to deliver customer experience improvements, optimize costs, manage volume and scale, and generate revenues. Arvato CRM Solutions is one of a small number of companies that NelsonHall recognizes as ‘a leader’, based on their overall ability to deliver immediate client benefits and meet future customer service requirements.

NelsonHall identifies cost optimization and customer experience improvements as particular strengths of Arvato CRM Solutions - including offshoring and nearshoring, operation consolidation, improvement in turnaround time through process optimization and automation, increase of customer satisfaction, reduced customer effort, and process improvement. Other highlights include the company’s proprietary conversational AI framework, strong technology and CX innovation partnership network, and mature self-service offering.

Andreas Krohn, CEO at Arvato CRM Solutions, said: “Being identified as a leader by NelsonHall is a testament to our delivery of truly market-leading customer service for many of the world’s best-known brands. It’s our combination of technology, people and deep experience that makes the real difference and means we can deliver great customer service that our clients value, now and in the future.”

Ivan Kotzev, CX Lead Analyst at NelsonHall, said: “Arvato CRM Solutions is well positioned to meet the key current and future client requirements for digital self-service. The company’s NLU capability and proprietary analytics and conversational AI frameworks, as well as domain experience, are fundamental to achieving cost optimization and improving the customer experience.”