Case Study - British Tourist Authority

Teleconomy examined the type of customer information that the organisation collated and provided insight into how best to exploit that information in the future. Teleconomy also supported the design of contact points for the 23 offices worldwide, taking account of local cultural differences within the overall strategy.

Firstly, Teleconomy did a global study of the expectations and perceptions of the organisation – what people think, what they want from the service, and what sort of service level they expect and received. Teleconomy also explored the impact of different channels, examining, for example, how the Web presence in a particular country varied from their high street presence.

To perform this study, the international arena was split into 9 regions. 200 to 400 people were contacted by telephone in each region, using native language speakers. Teleconomy examined everything from their general expectations – such as how much they expected a conversation to be personalised through to detailed questions about, for example, whether they expected a signature on a reply email.

As an example of the problems faced internationally, Southern Europeans do not like giving up any personal data, but do expect a highly personal conversation that draws on their account information. Ideally, Southern Europeans would like a face-to-face conversation, but in the absence of this, the conversation has to tease out personal data without directly asking for it or alluding to it. Only 42% of those surveyed expected the agent to be able to recall their address when they make further contact, yet 81% expect to be recognised as existing customers.

The UK population, on the other hand, is generally happy to provide personal data and expects the contact centre operator to know all relevant data, including account history information. Recollection of personal data is particularly expected in all forms of contact: 77% of those surveyed are comfortable with companies recording this data. This UK population are quite sophisticated in their understanding of contact centres and the role of marketing, and are typically not averse to receiving, for example, special offers based on their personal information.

Based on this survey, Teleconomy created bespoke consumer measurement satisfaction surveys to routinely check the performance of the 23 country offices via different channels, and created appropriate local weightings to take account of regional differences within the global framework. Teleconomy then provided feedback to each individual office based on regional attitudinal differences, bearing in mind the organisation’s worldwide strategies, and supported the re-design of contact points: what they looked like, what they felt like, and what components they needed to contain.

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