Case Study: Public sector
Partnering with universities and communities to deliver exceptional service for a student loans company
Managing an annual 400% spike in volumes while improving accuracy
The solution
Partnering to provide short-term staffing solutions
How we do it
This client has unique seasonal needs, with approximately 100 people needed in April and a September peak of 550 advisors. Prior to HGS’s support, the client struggled to meet service level requirements due to the complicated staffing requirements of these ramps, and the lack of service consistency.
HGS brought stringent employee recruitment and training, in alignment with the UCLAN partnership. Additionally, HGS’s stronger leadership and governance ensured succession planning for upskilling of advisors and learning curve mastery. This ensures employee development and engagement that improves agent competencies on the client’s schedule.
Today, HGS provides exclusivity to UCLAN for all fixed-term contract roles, resulting in a mutually beneficial partnership, in that the University can promote work experience as one of its advantages, while HGS gains access to an energetic, educated demographic who understands the customers and who, in most cases, actually prefers a short-term contract.
Work to accommodate this requirement starts each February, with HGS meeting with UCLAN to plan commitments. HGS brings in extra recruiters in March. Interviews start in April, allowing students to secure their summer jobs early to concentrate on exams. To reduce “no-shows” on the first day of training in June, HGS has collaborated with UCLAN to maintain student interest. To support high-volume intakes, HGS has designed a business-as-usual management structure that is ready to support an annual ramp via deputy manager roles. Deputy managers are formally part of the management structure, although depending on the time of year, the tasks they execute change. In low season, deputy managers answer calls whilst also undertaking management development. As the summer headcount grows, deputy managers lead teams.
To minimise resignations at the critical peak operating month of September, HGS organises shifts around individual student academic and social needs. Students receive indicative timetables by early August and, where possible, HGS uses these timetables to build workforce management models manually at 30-minute intervals. Flexible scheduling requires cooperation among HGS departments, clients, students, and fulltime staff. Students need only travel 10 minutes from UCLAN to HGS, and even this travel time is factored.
Business result
In 2018, our highly customised approach enabled HGS to deliver 99.9% of the resource delivery requirements. And our creative recruiting ensures our employment of team members caters to their own unique schedules. That could be one reason for the attrition improvement—from 14% before our staffing to today’s remarkable only 2% attrition. Finally, perhaps the best testament to the success of our staffing program is the fact that we are now aligning with yet another university in Lancaster. Needless to say, this is a win-win-win for HGS, the client and community alike, which could be the potential beneficiary of an HGS internship and on-the-job skills training.
HGS enables students to not only help pay for their education, but to graduate with business skills and a solid employer reference. Many UCLAN students need summer and part-time employment in Preston. HGS leadership has restructured to give students a taste of post-graduate life; HGS nurtures future employability.
Perhaps one of the best testimonials of the staffing success comes from HGS’s university partners. According to Mike Thomas, UCLAN Vice Chancellor, “We are proud that UCLAN will be supporting students around the country with their loan applications and to be partnering with a local employer with a vested interest in ensuring that, together, we are building the employability skills for UCLAN students.”
Improving operational accuracy with workflow tool
How we do it
One of the client’s key issues was related to the Data Protection Act (DPA), and the need to help agents achieve issue resolution by asking the right questions and taking the right steps in accordance with the campaign’s complex DPA rules. HGS was tasked to achieve quality scores and remove risk of service penalties. We leaned on our extensive automation expertise to create a desktop process flow that would help eliminate errors and resulting penalties. Today the tool is supported by a web browser and agent screen that includes a workflow to prompt agents to process primary and secondary verification.
Business result
HGS’s diagnostic tool achieves accurate data entry, as there has been an improvement in quality scores seen and a reduction in service credits. In December 2018, the client stated the project has been a success, with positioning of the solution to ensure continuously improving data accuracy, toward zero errors and a greater than 75% quality score.
Every day, HGS makes significant improvements, reducing critical fails
and resulting in a 0% rating for the call quality score. As a result of our DPA diagnostic tool, DPA fails have reduced. A call sample showed movement toward the 75% target quality score. Additionally, since September 2018 rollout, the tool is consistently delivering on intraday adherence, which has not occurred in the past two years. Finally, HGS’s operational excellence focus has ensured that the client is meeting average handle time (AHT) call improvements, for a consistently enhanced customer experience.
Results
Record-low
2% attrition
Ramp up and down by
400% every year!
Accuracy improvement toward 75%+
Summary
To meet the contractual resource delivery and quality SLAs (and the client’s internal 95/20 call answer target), HGS expands our team from 100 to 550 people for three months each summer. HGS’s team has creatively shifted our priorities to truly embrace students, partner innovatively with a local university, and address the client’s extreme peaks:
- Students supporting students: Who better to connect with students than students? Originally, due to program complexity, the client was unconvinced to the student strategy. However, working in close partnership, together we have been able to resolve recruiting and retention challenges associated with this extreme ramp.
- Campus replication: Aside from academics, people attend university for connections. The Preston leadership team now promotes and fosters team building, networking, and socialising. HGS has positioned friendship as a key advantage of the job, and many students develop genuine connections that extend beyond work.
- Continuous achievement of two challenging SLAs: The Preston team is obligated to meet quality and resource delivery metrics. One key challenge is delivering high quality with more than twothirds of the workforce newly hired and on three-month, fixed-term contracts. HGS/ the client connectedness is tested, and they may be less likely to engage deeply, make learning investments, and develop a rapport with each customer. The last four weeks, during the client’s critical September timeframe, requires HGS to be particularly adept, focused, and nimble with our people management. As such, we have developed innovative ways to inspire young employees, including: continuously offering contests and incentives and delivering an affinity-building, party-like atmosphere at this extremely busy time.
