LGI team shortlisted for CCF Awrd

Media contact:
Ewart Woolley
Tel: 01594 516079

LGI team short listed for European Award

The John Lewis Partnership Service Plan team at London General Insurance in Mitcheldean were short listed for Small Team of the Year, part of the European Call Centre Awards, from hundreds of entries received.

The awards were presented at the Birmingham Hilton Hotel on 22nd September. Sponsors include BT, British Gas, Avaya, and Sabio. The CCF awards are part of the Call Centre Expo, 22-23 September at the NEC, Birmingham.

LGI started work for The John Lewis Partnership in June 2008. Since then the work load has more than doubled with the team supporting administration and call handling. The team has consistently exceeded the administration target in 2009. The call handling performance has been exceptional. The service target was exceeded in every month this year by more than 3 percentage points. The team achieved this excellent performance by enthusiastically adopting multi-skilling and jointly developing and implementing a unique rotating workflow management scheme, which allows the whole team to contribute very effectively to each type of task. Since June 2008 when the John Lewis Service Plan team started work at Mitcheldean it has successively met and overcome many challenges to provide a high level of service for the John Lewis Partnership. Today the call average and administration work both run at well over 6000 interactions per month

The team worked together to devise new methods of working including multi-skilling so that each team member takes regular personal responsibility for administration and workflow in the team. This not only suits the team and the business needs, but also results in high levels of personal satisfaction and makes a major contribution to performance. Teresa Fish, team leader commented "It is important that there isn't 'one person, one job'. We wanted to create a team that offers as much knowledge as possible, and to have the opportunity to learn all aspects of the role. Absence is never an issue as every team member is multi-skilled and can handle all the tasks we have to do. Of course we invested in a high level of training to meet the requirements of the John Lewis Partnership, including 640 hours per person over a 5 month period."

In addition to the heavy investment in training the team also developed its own training package. "As it was a team design", continued Teresa, it is easy to keep up-to-date by people actually doing the work. One key task is to ensure that we adopt all the values of our client, The John Lewis Partnership and this includes a commitment to 'Treating Customers Fairly'. Every one in the team provides customers with clear information and keeps them appropriately informed."

Richard Ambler, Manager Extended Warranty at John Lewis is very pleased with the team's performance and congratulated them recently. "It has now been a year since The Warranty Group took over the running of the John Lewis Service Plan operation and I wanted to mark this event by saying a massive congratulations to everyone involved at Mitcheldean in making the first year such a successful one. It is credit to you all that you have fitted so smoothly into the John Lewis operation and I am always impressed by the level of service you deliver to our shared customers."

ends

Note: Images and text available by e-mail from ewart@cmpr.co.uk

LGI contact: Martin Scrivens Tel: 01594 863000