The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is the UK’s largest nature conservation charity, inspiring everyone to give nature a home and secure a healthy environment for wildlife. Amongst many of RSPB’s fundraising initiatives to support its conservation projects, RSPB provide an online shop and seasonal catalogue.
To support customers enquiries using the online shop RSPB had worked with an outsource contact centre partner for a number of years, but with implementation of a new CRM and growing pressures on businesses to increase data security processes RSPB decided to appoint a new supplier that could offer the security levels and flexible pricing structure they required.
RSPB needed a resilient and flexible solution they could scale up during their peak, seasonal periods.
Having been with their existing partner for a long period of time, a smooth and seamless transition of services to WeAnswer, without affecting customer service was paramount to this project.
WeAnswer was awarded the contract in January 2018 and had to complete the transfer within 7 weeks. Following an initial kick-off meeting to finalise the partnership’s scope, implementation plan and training structure, WeAnswer produced a comprehensive implementation plan involving 73 work streams. This included everything from contracts, telephony, operational set up, IT systems, processes, training and reporting.
The dedicated implementation team at WeAnswer comprised of 10 key functions including Key Account Management, Client Care, Training Management, Sales Management, Operations Management, HR Management IT Management and Training teams.
The WeAnswer team lead the implementation and transition of RSPB’s changeover to ensure continuity to their customer services.
RSPB provided WeAnswer with its existing training materials and process documents. These were then analysed and reviewed against the defined project activities and identified where improvements and streamlining of the processes could be made.
WeAnswer’s training team also identified gaps in training content and worked in collaboration with RSPB to ensure suitable knowledge would be available and ready for training rollout.
Following WeAnswer’s analysis of RSPB’s training materials, a comprehensive training strategy was implemented.
Each dedicated operator had 2 days of training, which included time dedicated to learning systems and processes. On top of the 2 days training, there was an additional five hours of RSPB product training.
The training was initially delivered by RSPB alongside the WeAnswer training team. The presence of the WeAnswer training team enables WeAnswer to monitor the ongoing quality and accuracy of Agents and also to fulfil future training needs as required.
WeAnswer managed the migration of the customer services operations, and offered additional support for the launch of RSPB’s web shop.
During the implementation, WeAnswer’s training team worked closely with RSPB to review, streamline and update its processes and procedures to increase the efficiency of the customer service processes in line with the new CRM system.
WeAnswer led weekly project calls to ensure the implementation was as seamless as possible and work stream milestones were met.
Prior to the go-live date, WeAnswer carried out 2 weeks of rigorous pre-launch testing to make sure the transfer would be seamless and involve minimal risk to customer service levels and everything was working as it should be.
This involved checking all secure connections to the RSPB systems, IVR and telephony routing procedures, and the greetings were set up and working, and that operator computers and client reporting was ready to go live.
Thanks to a comprehensive planning and implementation strategy, WeAnswer achieved a seamless transition and were able to launch the new partnership with RSPB in line with the project plan timeline.
This also meant the high level of service delivered to RSPB’s customers was maintained during the switch-over from their existing partner to WeAnswer.
When looking for a new contact centre partner for our trading operation, our primary concern was to ensure a high quality, enthusiastic and professional experience for our supporters. We want dedicated agents who consider themselves to be part of the RSPB team, who understand the needs of our supporters, and who are eager to go beyond the merely acceptable to ensure they consistently delight those they come into contact with on our behalf. We felt that WeAnswer were the ideal provider to meet these requirements.
The WeAnswer implementation team were a pleasure to work with, and at no point did I feel that there was any divergence between our aims and vision for what was needed. WeAnswer worked very closely with us on training, processes, and system installation and all of these went very smoothly and exactly to plan. During the go live period, RSPB staff were on site and were always made to feel very welcome and part of the team.
Both the dedicated team, and the client services team at WeAnswer have proven themselves to be adept at looking for, and suggesting, improvements to our products and processes. Being people who communicate with our supporters every day, they are best placed to see where improvements can be made, and the recording and implementing of these suggestions are now an important part of our regular meetings.
