Wolters Kluwer - Customer Service Training Team of the Year
Company: Wolters Kluwer
Company Description: Wolters Kluwer (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. Wolters Kluwer reported 2018 annual revenues of €4.3 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, and maintains operations in over 40 countries.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Training Team of the Year - External - Financial Services Industries
Nomination Title: SupportLine 3.0: Optimizing the Customer Experience
Wolters Kluwer’s SupportLine customer service team has engaged in continuous Quality initiatives the past several years to enhance the experience in resolving customers’ (banks, insurers) complex regulatory compliance issues. Quality 1.0 (2016-2019) focused on SupportLine agents and introduced a checklist/scorecard approach to ensure agents were universally applying core “soft skill” elements, such as effective listening, proper hold etiquette, anticipating customer needs, and appropriate follow-up. Quality 1.0 helped establish consistency across all interaction types and products, and it increased awareness for creating best practices, such as consistent agent email signatures and succinct, template responses.
To further enhance understanding of how we could providebetter service and reduce “high effort” customer interactions, SupportLine launched its Quality 2.0 program in mid-2019. By further minimizing customer call-backs and untimely responses, we enhanced the overall customer experience and thereby increased customer satisfaction. We recognized the need to expand our analysis beyond solely repeat call data to also include those indicators/triggers inherent within each customer event, helping Wolters Kluwer obtain a more complete, holistic view of customers’ experiences and thus overall satisfaction levels.
The “how” behind these achievements are detailed in the Supporting Documents of this submission and include a gold-level "Stevie."
Since mid-2019, the Quality program has succeeded in bridging the knowledge gap between new and tenured agents—while improving SupportLine agents’ overall expertise—by enlisting tools, training, and coaching that is personalized to an agent’s needs and, importantly, employing a “Go/Show/Teach” experiential training approach. Unique to this effort is our implementation of a “Perpetual Learning Cycle” (see attached graphic) for each agent that includes an experience coach and a partnered resource manager to foster customer interactions in a manner focused on achieving better customer outcomes.
The coaching process is another differentiating factor. When a source (see trigger examples in attached award entry) is identified by a coach, they assess the overall interaction and/or interactions related to the customer case and treat the overall experience as an event. The coach will provide their summary of the interaction(s) and their feedback to all agents involved in the event via a simplified assessment form that captures the event’s main elements. If a training opportunity is identified, the coach will reach out to provide 1:1 training/coaching to the agent. In some instances, no opportunities are identified, but constructive feedback and recognition provided to the agent are key elements in reinforcing positive behaviors for enhancing future customer interactions.
The Quality program has decreased the number of customer escalations sought beyond the first level of support, raised agents’ engagement levels, and significantly lowered the “Customer Effort” score, all factors contributing to our increasingly high Overall Customer Satisfaction scores (95 percent satisfaction as of December 2021).
Quality 2.0 focused on reducing customers’ “high-effort” experiences (i.e. escalations, repeated call-backs, untimely responses, etc.) by implementing more deliberate mentoring strategies to manage high-effort situations. In 2021, SupportLine introduced Quality 3.0,a more proactive customer service approach aided by a more expansive watchlist of scenarios to actively review—and address—triggers such as low/neutral customer satisfaction survey results, the number of opened/escalated cases, and at-risk customers, among other metrics.
To foster greater customer satisfaction, SupportLine coaches were assigned to identify issues and engage with agents for help in real time if warranted—and work to solve customer issues on the spot. We expanded agents’ utilization of support tools and leveraged a coach/whisper feature to help agents on those live calls. As part of the program, coaches take the opportunity after such interactions to constructively coach and further train the agent while the experience is still fresh.
Importantly, with 3.0 we created a safe, “no-penalty” learning environment, encouraging agents to openly ask superiors for help as needed. We focused on cultivating agents’ technical and domain expertise and overall development, first by establishing a set level of requisite baseline knowledge with each agent, and then creating an individualized training plan. We implemented this ongoing training approach and expanded the training methods used, including tools such as gamification exercises and workbooks.
As a result of these proactive interventions, SupportLine has raised already impressive customer satisfaction (OSAT) scores from 92 in 2020 to 95 percent by the end of December 2021 (see attachments).
Following and/or attached in support of this award entry are links to Wolters Kluwer’s website and to its SupportLine customer portal, along with customer AND agent testimonials on thebenefits of the Quality 2.0 and 3.0 upgrades, spreadsheets documenting customer escalation case and agent-related case improvements, and a graphic of Wolters Kluwer’s Perpetual Development Plan for SupportLine agents.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en
https://wkfs.force.com/ComplianceSolutionsSupport/s/
Additionally, SupportLine has earned eight major industry awards in the past 20 months for excellence in customer service that are driven by the continuous Quality initiative: a sampling of press releases highlighting several of those wins are included as supporting documents in this entry.
SupportLine Guiding Principles/OSAT Score (Word doc)
SupportLine “SAFE” Coaching Themes (Word doc)
Judges’ Feedback: SupportLine Quality 2.0 Gold-winning entry, 2021 Sales & Customer Service Stevie Awards (Word doc)
SupportLine Quality 2.0 Customer andAgent Testimonials (Word doc)
SupportLine Quality 2.0 Agent Scorecard: Insights into Action (Word doc)
SupportLine Comprehensive Perpetual Development Plan (Word doc)
Wolters Kluwer Earns Excellence in Customer Service Honor from BIG Awards (press release): https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/news/excellence-in-customer-service-honor-big-awards
Wolters Kluwer Earns Accolades for Product Innovation, Customer Service (press release): https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/news/wolters-kluwer-earns-accolades-for-product-innovation-customer-service-honor
Wolters Kluwer’s Compliance Solutions Wins Four Stevie Awards in 2020 American Business Awards® (press release): https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/news/wolters-kluwers-compliance-solutions-wins-four-stevie-awards-in-2020-american-business-awards