DHL Express Vietnam - Contact Center Manager of the Year

Company: DHL Express Vietnam
Company Description: With 77,000 employees, 4,000 facilities, over 40,000 service points, DHL Express serve 2.6 million customers and transport 294 million shipments in 2013 among more than 220 countries and territories, operate the most comprehensive global express network.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center Manager of the Year

Nomination Title: Ms. Pham Thi Hong Dao - A truly inspirational leader

Ms. Pham Thi Hong Dao has begun her career with DHL Express Vietnam in 1991 as a Customer Service Advisor and became a Contact Center Manager in 2007 until now.She has just recently celebrated the 30 years at DHL, but her accomplishments are immeasurable. She is a great example of what a leader looks like and she leads from the front, always inspiring her team to be the best and deliver the best. Under her leadership, Customer Contact Center (CCC) Team keep achieved consistently all green performance every year and proudly recognized 21 External Awards for Contact Center of the Year since 2015 (7 Stevie Awards).

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, we faced many challenges from the sudden spikes call volumes while our staff are forced to work remotely. As CCC, we need to maintain the service level and minimize any service disturbance to our customers. With the great effort from her and her team, CCC Team not only maintained all KPIsfrom Jul19 to Sep21 beyond our targets but also achieved many outstanding records: Top2 of DHL's Global Customer Service Awards, 2020 Stevie Awards for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year and Contact Center of the Year.

During the crisis time, under Ms. Dao’s guidance, CCC throve performance and improved customer satisfaction through YTDSep21 performances:

Grade of Service (GOS): 92.7 % calls answered before 10seconds vs. target_90.0%
Abandoned call rate (ACR): 0.8% calls abandoned after 10seconds vs. target_1.0%
% Upselling performance achieved 77.1% vs. target_33.4%.
Sales Lead per CS staffs at 43.6 vs. target_36
NPA 2020-YTDSep21 shows 86.4% (445/515) customers rated 9-10 scores regarding CCC touchpoints.
CCC Quality score of 95% vs. target_90%

Ms. Dao also leads by example and has been pivotal in many initiatives to improve processes that make team more efficient and build up CCC strong: Program to enhance Knowledge and Skills for our staff; Campaigns to boost Up-selling and enhance quality by engaging staffs deliver excellent service to our customer and showing positive behavior (Shining Like a Star). She also took part in deploying Digital Assistant (Chat-Bot) in CCC in July 2020 which provided 24/7 access to conversational self-service for customers.

In uncertainty and disruption time, Ms. Dao arranged transition quickly and smoothly call centers to virtual work environment without any impacts on operational business. She maximized the use of virtual meeting and coaching tools; organized virtual activities within CCC to engage staff or campaign to recognize the outstanding performers during challenging time. This supported CCC Advisors staying productive and engaged even working from home. As a result, Employee Opinion Survey (EOS) 2021 gave Active Leadership at 95 points and Employee Engagement at 97 points.

The Covid-19 outbreak in Vietnam in 2020 and became more complex in 2021 forced the community lockdown across Vietnam. As a result, DHL Vietnam only operated in some restricted areas with limited manpower and CCC experienced the sudden call volume (increased by 30% from normal levels). To deal with these obstacles, Ms. Dao developed a contingency plan for swift actions. That supported to not only keep CCC intact but also improve performances in comparison with previous period and APEC:

GOS and ACR YTDSep21 improved vs. YTDSep20 (92.7% vs. 92.1%; 0.8% vs. 1.0%)
Up-selling improved continuously year on year (44.0%_YTDSep20 vs. 77.1%_YTDSep21) and being TOP 1 in APEC.
Top 3 of Regional Campaign - CS Qualified Leads Growth Program in 2020,
Top 2 of DHL's Global Customer Service Awards in 2020

Ms. Dao led her team accomplish the outstanding performances remotely without a significant drop in productivity or quality. This was shown by customer satisfaction: ICCC tracker score of 84, higher by 11 points than our competition (as at Q2 2021). MSP Scores YTDSep21 is higher 27.9% than our competitor for Pre-booking Enquiry (96.2% vs. 68.3%).

By understanding what employees are experiencing and providing empathetic support, Ms. Dao build employee commitment by improving turn-over rate in CCC from 61% _2019 to 25% _2020 and 22%_ YTDSep21 while Contact Center Industry avg. turnover rate between 30-45%. This contributed to DHL Express Vietnam being recognized as 1st Best Place to Work for worldwide in 2021.

Mystery Shopper Program (MSP) is an independent Quality Assessment program conducted every month to access CSA’s in terms of K-P-H and compliance to process

Net Promoter Approach (NPA) Program: We contact customers who have had an interaction with CS touch-points. From this, we use their critical feedback to make improvements, adjust processes, and drive customer loyalty.

CCC Contingency Plan: ensures continuity in delivering high levels of service to valued customers and minimizes the impact on our business. This plan cover any of the scenarios that impacts on business: Under-performing KPI Performance hazard; Staff Absenteeism; System/ Application down; Business interruption; Working from home activation

CCC programs to enhance knowledge, skills and quality:
Dare to be a specialist & GEMA Explores: give new staffa good chance to deep dive into product services and process/ system knowledge. All the tips are shared by seniors in the session to improve the team level.
My idea/ My PD: create a big opportunity for staff to demonstrate and improve their skills in many situations, supervised and supported by Supervisors and Managers.
Christmas and Summer Races: encourage advisors to deliver the best for providing the qualified sales lead by identifying and bringing potential customers to DHL.
Shining Like a Star: encourage advisors to strive for best pieces of work by delivering excellence service to customer and showing positive behavior

CCC virtual activities: PD dialogue; Interactive Photo Contest; The Power of CS