Knowing that a motor vehicle is one of the biggest investments of many people’s lives, Tristan is aware of the emotional drivers at play when a customer of Volkswagen reaches out to a member of his team. In today’s “Customer-Centric” market, the importance of being able to respond to them in a timely manner and deliver the premium level of service that is appropriate for such an investment is key. In the below videos, Tristan explains some of the challenges for Customer Service leaders, and describes how partnering with us has helped him overcome them.
The ability to respond to changes in demand with speed and efficiency is key to the maintenance of any premium brand reputation. It is expected that there will be a team of professionals on hand at all times to respond to inbound phone calls and social media enquiries quickly and accurately. The headcount of the Customer Service team must match the expected enquiry volume in order to maintain customer experience. Having the right sized team at the right time also helps to protect Full-Time staff. Right sizing your team ensures that core staff are not strained or overwhelmed, and that the employment experience continues to be positive. This will save costs in the long term as it mitigates attrition and churn.
Contingent staffing platforms like Weploy come at a premium - the benefits of having talent on-demand, and the effects of Fair Work obligations such as casual loading requires additional costs. But the cost of having an imbalance in team size and workload can lead to increased Attrition, Burn-Out and Churn rates, which are also very real and tangible costs to any business. Failure to keep up with the day-to-day can result in huge backlogs of work that drain time and resources to get through in the long term. All these factors can end up costing far more than paying the upfront premium costs to leverage a Contingent Staffing pool. In order to justify these costs to senior business heads, Tristan focuses on the added benefits he experiences by working with partners like Weploy, such as de-risking the business of Regulatory requirements.
The team at Volkswagen are moving towards full operational agility with a blended workforce of Full-Time and Part-Time staff and partnering with tech providers that can adapt quickly and easily into the existing technology ecosystem. The business has invested significantly into cloud technologies and currently about 34% of the contact centre works from home. Now, anyone who can be trusted to perform can help Fardy’s team deliver against their targets, provided they have access to a laptop, and an internet connection. He notes that Weploy is one of the few partners that can match Volkswagens’ speed and efficiency when it comes to working with flexibility and agility.
"We know that Weploy has gone to a higher level of rigour than some of their competitors in terms of the vetting and compliance. This comes through in the performance outcomes and the quality of candidature we know to expect."
The attraction, sourcing and retaining of quality candidates that will enrich and enhance customer service teams is a challenge in today’s economic environment. There is a growing trend of hiring practices that are based on soft skills over hard skills and specific experience, and Volkswagen is at the forefront of this shift. Leveraging the services of Weploy means that leaders can rely on the benefits of a 6-stage vetting process focussing on psychometrics, cognitive ability and soft-skills. An employee that has years of direct experience but is tired, unengaged and unmotivated, will have a very different outcome to the business than the potential of a candidate who is self-motivated and driven. The Weploy guarantee means that clients have an additional layer of safety - if a Weployee comes through the door that doesn’t perform as expected on their first day, we will replace them and cover the costs too.
"I'm looking for people that are going to enrich our culture... I can train and coach people to perform and execute against the role. It's much harder to coach or influence people to have the right attitude upfront. What's great about Weploy is that you've already done a lot of the guesswork for me in finding, attracting, and retaining those people."