CareerTalk with Brenda Beavon, Solutions Director, ArvatoConnect

The CCMA’s CareerTalk podcast returned for the second episode of our fourth season.

Brenda Beavon, Customer Service Solutions Director at contact centre tech solutions business, ArvatoConnect.

Here’s some key takeaways from Brenda’s discussion with our CEO, Leigh.

• Brenda gets to build contact centres for other organisations from the ground up, in her role at ArvatoConnect. “I have the best job in the world. I’ve done most jobs in the contact centre during my career, and now I get to create them. When new clients come along, we look at all the customer requirements then I ask ‘if this is my contact centre, what would I be doing’. We look at everything – from how we structure the team, how do we support the agents, what technology we need. It’s a bit like a detective’s job – we’re trying to understand customers’ painpoints, what they need, are there regulatory issues and how can tools and technology support all of that. Then we set about writing out all the things needed and recommending them to clients.”
• Brenda grew up in Australia and learned Japanese at school, which led to her first contact centre role aged 23. “I got a job as a Japanese-speaking assistance coordinator. The business was called World Access Australasia and we provided emergency assistance for Aussies travelling all over the world. We all spoke different languages and were all seasoned travellers and get to learn medical terminology in different languages so we could support people 24/7.”
• Brenda had a stint as Head of Consumer Transformation at Royal Mail. “The contact centre was massive – 1,500 agents – but in terms of the scale of Royal Mail it was a small part of the organisation. They gave me the title of ‘The Lone Ranger’ – I was able to go and find aspects of the customer journeys and project manage improvements that were needed. The digital team was growing in Royal Mail and a big part of the role became getting a voice at head office to say ‘we look after customers every day, you need to start listening to us because we know what’s going on’. I linked in with the digital team and we started to look at all the ways we could improve the experience. There were a lot of barriers at first but plenty of persevering. It was a huge operation so there was a lot of test and learn.”

Listen to the episode in full:

Upcoming guests for the series include:

• Hannah Ratcliff-Barnes, HSBC 3 October, Live on Linkedin at 12pm
• Rachel Hulme, Liberata  17 October, Live on Linkedin at 12pm
• Mick O’Brien, First Customer Contact 24 October, Live on Linkedin at 12pm
• Kirk Bradley, BUPA 28 November, Live on Linkedin at 12pm
• Rachel Lewis, NatWest 5 December, Live on Linkedin at 12pm