Keynote: The Value of Community

In this opening keynote, The Forum team members will discuss the importance of community.

Originally broadcast Monday 9th October, 09:30

In this opening keynote, The Forum team members will discuss the importance of community. They will provide practical advice to help you expand your connections within and beyond your organisation.

Keynote: Unlocking Opportunities

Originally broadcast Monday 1st November 2021, 09:30

How has our thinking changed during 2021? Phil Anderson and Dave Vernon, Directors at The Forum will explore the ever-changing business environment and the different approaches being taken to drive forward with improvements.

Keynote: Unlocking Opportunities

Originally broadcast Monday 26th April. 2021, 09:30

Hear from Phil Anderson, Director at The Forum with the conference opening keynote. Understand how disruption can pave the way for new opportunities and how you can become key to unlocking change and development.

Keynote: Your Moment of Truth

Originally broadcast Monday 4th April 2022, 09:30

Confident to Succeed Every day we practice living versus an ever-changing world and environment. Those who strive to learn and improve can adapt better. Those who are contempt with how they are or refuse to accept the changes around them will find it hard to catch-up as the change required to survive and thrive becomes bigger.

Kieran Ridley at Newcastle Building Society

2024 Planning Awards

Transitioning from operational backgrounds to strategic planning, Kieran embraced change and innovation while navigating integration challenges. He implemented Workforce Management solutions, streamlined processes, and introduced a centralised bereavement team to enhance service delivery and mitigate risks. With a focus on accuracy and efficiency in forecasting, he demonstrated resilience and adaptability in managing staffing levels and call volumes. Continuous learning and improvement underscore his commitment.

Leeds Bradford Airport Planning Team

2024 Planning Awards

This team revolutionised operations by adopting data-driven planning, refining stakeholder engagement, and streamlining processes, planning for security operations. Customer satisfaction saw huge improvements following queue times plummeting from 24 to 6.5 minutes and improved communication internally optimised resource planning and reduced errors. They removed inefficiencies, boosted employee satisfaction, and were able to attract high-quality recruits as a result. Through a culture of innovation and collaboration, they set a new standard for excellence in the aviation industry.

Liquorice Consistents – Does somebody at Bassetts not like me?

At our Customer Strategy & Planning Connections conference in Newcastle on 26th April ‘22 we explored probability using Liquorice Allsorts.

Looking back on 2021

2021 was our year for Unlocking Opportunities. Doing more of what we do well is a great opportunity that we don’t always fully exploit. One of the most valuable things we can do is put time aside to reflect on what has gone well. When things go wrong we are quick to review, so that we can learn from our mistakes. We are not so good at learning from our successes. If we can repeat and build on our successes then that has to be a good thing. As we come to the end of 2021 it is time to look back on what we have done well, so that in 2022 we can do it again only better.

miPerform & Northumbrian Water

2024 Partnership Awards

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.

Moment of Truth: Confident to Succeed

Our actions, or inaction, will define us. We are the key to our own success. During 2021 we focused on unlocking opportunities and the part each of us can play in helping to shape the future. For 2022 we want to focus you on your Moment of Truth and being confident to succeed.

NFU Mutual Planning Team

2024 Planning Awards

NFU Mutual’s planning team evolved rapidly from a modest operation to a central strategic pillar within their organisation, overcoming scepticism, significantly increasing the team’s size and scope, and demonstrating the tangible benefits of strategic planning. Key to their success was establishing a strong, data-driven decision-making process, stakeholder engagement, and the ability to demonstrate the practical value of planning initiatives, leading to a broader acceptance and integration of the planning team’s efforts across the organisation

NICE and BT Group

2024 Partnership 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.

Opening Keynote

Originally broadcast Monday 14th November 2022, 09:30

Hear from Chris & Phil as they discuss the benefits of being prepared.

Operational Readiness

This video is to accompany the article in the 2024 Best Practice Guide: Shaping the Future

Partner Article: How to set the right service level goal in your call center

What is your contact center service level goal? Odds are, some or all of the groups are at either 80/20, 70/30 or some combination of those. They are extremely common. Do you use average speed of answer (ASA)? If so, is it 20 seconds or 30 seconds? Those are by far the most utilized ASAs. But what do these actually mean and how do you know if you have the right measure?

Partner Article: Improve Contact Centre Operations with Robotic Process Automation

Alvaria Automate™ Attended and Alvaria Automate™ Unattended allows centres to optimise normal and repetitive operational activities and automate error-prone tasks through robotic process automation (RPA) —improving accuracy, efficiency and consistency, while helping maintain compliance.

Partner Article: Majority of UK businesses still ill-equipped for a hybrid working future according to new survey

UK businesses are firmly committed to a flexible working future but the majority are still in the planning stage of their hybrid working projects according to a new industry survey of contact centre industry professionals.

QStory & Jet2holidays

2024 Partnership Awards

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.

Questions to consider for annual leave

As the world reboots after the firm reset of the Pandemic, we have the opportunity to revisit, redefine and reshape how we have done things. 2020 was a strange year, especially for annual leave, as lockdown restrictions changed how we used annual leave and the Government stating leave can be carried over, firmly “kicking the can” down the road, to give us a problem for another day (or year).

Reversing a decline in customer satisfaction can unlock productivity gains for business

With economic conditions tight and a possible recession looming, every customer purchase decision matters to businesses. Whatever sector you’re in, there are many facets to enticing customers to buy – quality, value for money, convenience – but one of the key ingredients is customer service. From Jo Causon, CEO at The Institute of Customer Services.

Sabio & DHL

2024 Partnership Awards

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.

Shaping the Future

Learning from across the industry helps us to know the fundamentals and brilliant basics, recognise good to best practice and showcase excellence and pioneering new ways. This collaborative way of working helps us to understand all types of challenges, from enduring problems, current and emerging trends to unique and outlying issues and priorities. This isn’t about industry averages and validating old ways of thinking. This is about stretching our thinking, learning and doing something differently.

Standards and Business Accreditation

The Standards programme is designed as a journey of improvement leading towards accreditation for Planning, Insight and Quality teams and functions. Whether you are at the start of your journey, wanting to understand the fundamentals of best practice, or an established team wanting to become best-in-class this programme is you.

Steven Hunter at Hiscox

2024 Data, Analytics & Insight Awards

At Hiscox, Steven transformed corporate planning by adopting advanced methodologies and improving data management. His benchmarking efforts and use of the Minto Pyramid Principle for communication enhanced strategic operations in the UK. Steven’s initiative underscored the importance of innovation and foresight, driving Hiscox towards operational excellence and sustainable growth. This case highlights the significance of strategic planning and data-driven decision-making in the competitive business landscape.

Strength in numbers the value of community

We build strength when we focus on how we collaborate and who we do this with. When we bring together trusted data, analysis and insight alongside a group of people with a collective desire to improve, we can achieve greatness.

SVL and Hoover Candy

2024 Partnership Awards

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.

Tambla and Leeds Bradford Airport

2024 Partnership Awards

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.

Technology Showcase: Calabrio

Originally broadcast Friday 2nd October 2020, 12:30

The State of the Contact Centre: Embracing the Evolving World of Work Join Ed Creasey, Director of Pre-Sales for Calabrio, as we explore how leading contact centres are turning disruption to their advantage. From the rapid increase in importance of the contact centre, to changes in demands from employees and customers, we will be envisioning the contact centre of the future. Join us to discuss tangible ways to embrace this evolving world of work.

Technology Showcase: Sabio

WEM and wellbeing, understanding AX during operational change. Join Sabio's expert team to discover the power of their new and cutting-edge wellbeing technology.

Originally broadcast Monday 15th May 2023, 12:30

WEM and wellbeing, understanding AX during operational change. Join Sabio's expert team to discover the power of their new and cutting-edge wellbeing technology, integrated into the agent desktop and WEM capabilities. This innovative approach provide a systematic view of the impact of the workplace on the employee, as well as practical guidance to promote success.

The power of effective communication

Why do some people, teams and organisations continually struggle with communication? Yet, many global organisations excel in cross-functional collaboration and engagement?

Learning Academy

In this opening keynote, The Forum team members will discuss the importance of community.

2024 Planning Awards

2024 Planning Awards

2024 Partnership Awards

2024 Planning Awards

2024 Partnership Awards

2024 Partnership Awards

2024 Partnership Awards

2024 Data, Analytics & Insight Awards

2024 Partnership Awards

2024 Partnership Awards

WEM and wellbeing, understanding AX during operational change. Join Sabio's expert team to discover the power of their new and cutting-edge wellbeing technology.