2021 Customer Strategy & Planning Speakers

With clearer processes and information needed, Water Plus built Oasis - one simple knowledge hub. Clear steps, smart guides and knowledge gaps addressed. Now, staff feel confident, training’s faster, and customers get informed responses - first time.

Vitality let people choose when they worked—and it paid off. Shift coverage stayed solid, call answers improved, and satisfaction soared. Trusting teams with their time made everyone more engaged and ready to show up.

TSB launched Video Banking so people could speak to advisors without leaving home. It worked. Customers loved it, staff felt more efficient, and the personal touch didn’t get lost —just delivered differently.

Trainline ditched a clunky old phone system and brought in a faster, smarter one. It routes calls better, saves cash, and makes coaching easier. Now teams have more time to focus on what really matters—helping customers.

Outdated systems and manual tasks were slowing things down. So Guinness shook things up — blending video calls, automation, and smarter planning. Wait times dropped, staff felt more balanced, and customer ratings shot up.

The old holiday booking system caused stress. So, the AA Scheduling Team scrapped it and gave people guaranteed leave. More flexibility, less admin, and record service levels followed. It worked because they trusted their people.

OVO mixed AI, automation, and human support to make planning and service slicker. Teams have more time to do meaningful work, and customers get faster answers. It’s a smarter, simpler way to keep things moving.

Openreach brought customer and operations teams together under one roof. That shift—from blame to teamwork—cut delays, boosted service, and got everyone focused on fixing problems fast. The big win? Customers noticed the difference.

The team grew fast, but development didn’t keep up. So NHSBSA built a simple framework—Do, Think, Achieve. It gave staff structure, time to grow, and space to thrive. Now, internal talent is rising, and planning is stronger than ever.

Info was everywhere — old, scattered, or just missing. So the team built a one-stop space that is clear, up to date, and easy to use. Staff trust the info again, and customers get better answers first time.

Planning was difficult. Forecasts didn’t match the real workload. So they simplified, introduced smarter tools, and brought everyone along for the ride. Now, service is quicker, people feel supported, and planning finally works for everyone—not just the system.

NCFE’s support team was struggling—low morale, unclear direction, and poor systems. Instead of rushing fixes, they listened and made steady, meaningful changes. A new culture, better tools, and a focus on people turned things around fast.

WFM at Monzo was spreadsheet chaos. They cleaned it up with better data, clever automation, and small steady steps. Now, forecasting is sharper, scheduling is smoother, and the team has become a key player in strategy.

Forecasting at eBay was all over the place. Different countries, different models. So they built one global approach—simpler, faster, and easier to share. Now, teams save time, help each other out, and plan better across the board with improved consistency.

This team didn’t go for a big overhaul. They focused on everyday stuff — team shadowing, clearer leadership, and small changes that added up. The result? Stronger culture, better teamwork, and big wins for customers and staff alike.

Old systems made life harder—for staff and customers. British Gas Homecare rolled out new tools to forecast better, plan smarter, and cut admin. Engineers now focus on fixing, not paperwork—and customers get help when they need it most.

Contact volumes exploded, and complaints followed. British Gas didn’t panic—they reworked how they talk to customers, trained staff better, and used smart tools to stay ahead. Now, calls are shorter, customers are happier, and complaints are way down.

Retiring from a pension scheme used to mean paperwork and waiting. Brightwell made it digital, secure, and way more user-friendly. Members now retire faster, with less stress—and staff can focus on people, not forms.

Fixing one thing at a time wasn’t cutting it. Aldermore zoomed out, mapped the full customer journey, and broke down silos. Teams now collaborate better, delays are down, and customers are seeing a real difference.

ACCA’s Training team went from quiet and traditional to bold and digital. They built fun, engaging content in-house, saved loads of money, and made learning something people actually want to do. Big impact, small team.

This collaborative and professional partnership has revolutionised back office operations and enhanced customer experiences at Vitality Health. The deployment of Verint Operational Manager has given visibility, streamlined processes, improved data analytics, and facilitated better demand planning. The outcome was not only a substantial increase in operational efficiency but also a significant reduction in customer complaint resolution times, reduced from two months to 72 hours. A strong sense of professionalism and a governance framework has been key to delivering and demonstrating the success of this implementation.
 

Collaboration and joint ownership of the plan has been key to the success of the implementation of a WFM solution, tailored to the aviation industry. This has supported LBA’s passenger growth and service delivery expectations and enabled a consolidation and centralisation of their planning and forecasting functions. There is now a clear view of workload and staffing levels, this has enabled data-led decision making to improve operational performance, queues in security have been reduced and SLAs with airlines are being met, all helping the airport to bounce back post pandemic.

A consultative approach from SVL identified that Calabrio would provide Hoover Candy with a tool that not only reduced manual processes but also delivered self-service functionality for agents to have more control over their schedules. SVL worked closely with Hoover Candy to plan the roadmap forthe roll out to focus on areas that would get buy in from internal stakeholders early in the process and to resolve technical issues with some of the key interfaces. Open communication and a deep understanding of their clients’ needs has been key to the success of this relationship.

In a strategic partnership with Sabio, DHL Express UK embarked on transforming its resource planning and employee engagement, addressing staffing inconsistencies and inefficiencies. By overhauling their Workforce Management system, focussing on accuracy, optimisation, and schedule flexibility, they achieved significant improvements in forecast accuracy, resource efficiency, and employee satisfaction. Sabio took time to understand DHL, and their service goals, and worked hard to support and upskill the team at DHL. These efforts led to marked cost savings, showcasing the value of leveraging technology and innovation in the logistics industry.

A mature and established partnership between QStory and Jet2holidays delivered an extremely successful intraday automation implementation, which has been a great enabler for Jet2holidays homeworking model. Once they had a better visibility of their absence, QStory supported Jet2holidays with the establishment of a centralised absence management function SMART. The QStory policy of retaining 30% of developer time to be available to work on customer requests has been a real enabler for this change, ROI and stakeholder impact has been positive. Jet2holidays are so delighted that QStory were awarded one of their coveted supplier awards.

Driven by a goal to discover whether NICE’s NEVA technology could be used to support scheduling activities, NICE and BT Group worked together as one team to design a solution. By adopting NICE’s NEVA technology, they were able to reduce the number of interdependent systems, remove transactional work, and create new skills and career development opportunities for schedulers to learn robotics. This venture was built on mutual respect, open communication, and shared goals, and created a new use case for NEVA which works for BT Group and which NICE can share with their customers.

miPerform and Northumbrian Water have been working in partnership since 2020 to redefine the boundaries of client and technology collaboration. At the heart of this partnership is a joint vision to deliver customer service excellence through empowering agents and enabling self-management, through deployment of an innovative toolset that supports peer-to-peer benchmarking, gamification, transparency, and fairness of reward. The operational background of the team at miPerform has been key to success; they understand what is important, combined with rapid response times, shared goals and an openness to learning and challenge. This is a very successful and embedded partnership.

This open and trusting partnership has delivered on the selection and configuration of the best fit interaction analytics platform for Dwr Cymru Welsh Water. Davies, through their Managed Analytics service trained the team and helped them to identify priorities, and scale problems to ensure that they did not try to do too much all at once, and ROI was achieved. A process issue affecting one vulnerable customer was identified, queries revealed the extent of the customer base that could be affected by this flaw, this enabled them to make a change to the process, improving services for their most vulnerable customers. Results include a reduction in verbal complaints of 15%, a reduction in AHT by 35 seconds, and a speed up of the investigation process from 14 days, to just one day.

In a strategic collaboration, global retailer TJX and Davies revolutionised employee onboarding, focussing on decentralised training and soft skills. Incorporating digital learning and aligning with cultural values, they achieved a 300% investment return, which included a reduction in the glide path to productivity in the contact centre from 8 weeks to 6 weeks. This partnership not only enhanced employee engagement and customer service for TK Maxx and HomeSense but also established new benchmarks for training excellence, an increase in empathy and rapport with customers with a positive impact oncustomer loyalty.

This strong, responsive, and mature partnership has delivered the first ever integration of the OPX back-office system with NICE, and the first integration that NICE has had with a back-office system. Student Loans now has full visibility of staff across the estate, allowing for the dynamic allocation of staff to different roles based on changing needs and operational priorities. Frequent and transparent communication at many levels, and easy access for the SLC team with CMS developers really helped to deliver a solution that meets their customers’ needs. ROI is very impressive, with £925k in year one and savings of up to £3.6m per annum.