Customer focus makes the Western Australian call centre a winner

Sandy Taseff, Assistant Call Centre Manager at the WA call centre, loves her job.

And that’s a good thing, given she and her team answer around 5,500 calls from SGIO customers every day.

This year their customer focus was recognised when they won the Australian Service Excellence Award for WA, based on their ability to display a commitment to customer service leadership via people, processes and leadership routines.

Sandy confirms that the customer is at the centre of everything they do.

“We are constantly talking with our team about how we can see things from the customer’s perspective. Our team leaders are responsible for coaching and developing their employees so they are always improving the way they help our customers,” says Sandy.

“And we give every single person on the team the autonomy to help improve our service.”

For example, service consultants Jessica Shynn and Kristy Sutton came up with the idea to give all consultants access to customers’ pay-by-the-month histories. Simple enquiries can now be dealt with by the consultants without being escalated. This effectively removes one step from the process and ensures customers receive a much better and efficient service. This change was rolled out across the call centre network after being successfully trialled in WA.

In general, call centres are renowned for high levels of turnover. In WA, the management team has adopted several successful strategies to reduce attrition.

“We’re targeting more mature people – over 45s,” says Sandy. “They’ve already done a lot of their ‘life stuff’ so they tend to be more loyal – they just want to work for a good company.”

She also dispels the myths that flexible options and career opportunities are limited in call centres.

“We recruited an evening team- the Nocturnals- on the basis that they can work two days, they can work five days, they can work as few days a week as they like…and they can get stuff done in the morning and work with us in the evenings.”

“In terms of development and career opportunities, we’ve introduced a new service certificate. One hundred of our consultants are about to graduate. And we’ve introduced senior consultant positions to recognise those people who are good role models, who are living the values.”

“I started 19 years ago with SGIO and I still love coming to work every day. This isn’t just a job, it’s about making a difference for customers.”