The UK National Contact Centre Conference

Our industry has created a platform to flourish, and so has the CCMA. Leigh will reveal how the CCMA has transformed itself to support the industry more than ever, and what this means for members and the wider market.

Consumer perceptions of business and government inform their expectations as customers and citizens. With ongoing economic and political turbulence raising the stakes, organisations have to work harder than ever to meet expectations. Furthermore, expectations can differ massively from person to person.

Join Stephen as he explains how the contact centre has a pivotal role to play in keeping customers and citizens on side, acting as a crucial brand touchpoint delivering experiences that change perceptions for the better.

Discover how TUI is using their award-winning apprenticeship programme to develop both their frontline and contact centre support teams. You’ll hear some of their success stories from this diverse and inclusive programme, and some of the challenges they are facing and overcoming. Above all, you’ll hear how their approach to apprenticeships is leading the way at TUI.

GOLD: Best Apprenticeship Programme

Join in with this open mic session where Kate will be asking the question how do we find the right balance between human contact and digital service. With AI threatening to dehumanise customer contact, budgets being squeezed and the ever-growing demands of customers, creating an operation that can optimise every element to enable colleagues, deliver for customers and benefit the business is our mission.

The base employee benefits at Specsavers are exceptional, so to win Gold at the UK National Contact Centre Awards for Best Colleague Wellbeing Programme the team had to demonstrate how they had gone above and beyond to support their frontline. Listen in to this panel interview as we explore how the team brought wellbeing to life and the impact it has had on KPIs, including their attrition.

GOLD: Best Colleague Wellbeing Programme

Recognising the power of the contact centre in delivering brilliant customer experiences through valuable colleague experiences, technology plays a key role in enabling both. Stuart Dorman will deliver his view on the technology that will help to deliver productive conversations for your businesses and your customers.

Being agile and adapting to create a way of working that supports the business and the needs of colleagues was critical to British Gas’s transformation programme. Discover how British Gas’s contact centre now operates, what they have achieved and how the cost savings have resulted in giving colleagues time back.

GOLD: Most Effective Way of Working

There is no doubt that the contact centre is a great place for an incredibly diverse workforce. It leads the way across business in embracing diversity, enabling inclusion and creating a great place for everyone to bring their real selves to work. Discover how organisations are adapting and changing lives.

Marco Ndrecaj, Director, Customer Experience Management, SSCL, Victor Chambers, Specialist Team Manager, npower Business Solutions, Josh Carrfield, Customer Representative, Leeds Building Society, Ben Wilkin, Mortgage Assessor, Leeds Building Society and Lucie Child, Head of Strategy, Planning & Controls Customer Care, The Very Group

The BT Complaints Team is proud to say that they fix things. As well as focused of building trust and resolving complaints, the team is using the insight to change policy. Find out how this approach has resulted in the rest of the business listening to this customer obsessed team.

GOLD: Complaints Team of the Year

Helping vulnerable customers is tough for the frontline, so how do you create a thriving culture? Rob will reveal how TSB is investing in colleagues, finding a healthy balance between the latest technology and giving customers access to real people, while ensuring the frontline is digital-ready. All this in an environment that treasures diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

GOLD: Best Contact Centre Culture (Small)

The new Experience Design team at IKEA, responsible for quality, knowledge, continuous improvement and insights, has delivered big for the contact centre. Find out how this support team has fully integrated the contact centre into the wider customer experience and has embedded its approach across the global IKEA network.

GOLD: Contact Centre Support Team of the Year (Customer)

The first cohort of future leaders will be recognised as having passed the Futures: Leadership Programme, accredited by the CCMA.

We are all subject to the Economy Of The Attention. It’s reckoned we come into contact with an average of 10,000 adverts a day, companies and organisations desperate to take control of our eyeballs and our thought processes, to place themselves on our to-do list for the day. Why? Because attention is the most valuable commodity we possess, to be spent wisely or wasted. It can be translated by those who control it into money, yes, but also into political influence, apathy, happiness, sadness, anger, or whatever they choose. The result? We are constantly being distracted from the things we truly need and love by things which take our focus for hours at a time and leave us frustrated and angry.

In this session, journalist and consumer champion Matt Allwright explains, with the benefit of decades of experience, why any customer-facing organisation which cares about its base and wants long-term mutually beneficial relationships with it must consider attention as a limited and precious resource when developing its values, policies and strategies. In fact, it’s essential to place a value on customer attention and focus which is at least equivalent to the value placed on their time and money, and to ask a few crucial questions:

1. How did this person come to find me, and to spend their attention with me?
2. What do they expect in return for the attention they are spending with me?
3. How do I repay the attention they are spending with me?
4. Where am I wasting the attention that they are spending with me?

Matt will identify those commonly-used CX processes which waste attention, the magical effect of human contact in honouring the customer, and why right now, giving your frontline the ability to service and sell responsibly, and to understand and resolve problems might just be the best thing a company can do.

As she closes this years’ conference, Leigh will reflect on the day and provide one final thought for you to take away.