Focus on People
Covid & WFH have brought in changes in the way staff is managed in the contact centers:
Equitas Small Finance Bank has a r o und 7 0 e x e c ut i v e s in t he department that handles customer experience, which comprises not only the contact center but other functions that drive customer care. Dheeraj Mohan, Head, Strategy & IR, BI & CE at the bank, says at the contact center, the bank has around 50 employees across voice and non-voice channels. “During the last 12 months, we have not scaled up the team despite customer acquisition rates doubling at the bank, but we are investing in automation solutions to ensure the scale-up is more tech-driven than manpower-led.”
He adds further: “We have been focusing on technology-led initiatives that empower our customers to service themselves efficiently and quickly.”
Kotak Mahindra Bank has a total of 4 call centers – 3 in-house and one outsourced. Nearly 2000 employees manage the inbound and outbound calls at these centers. Puneet Kapoor, President - Products, Alternate Channels & Customer Experience Delivery at the bank says: “We are guided by the positivity rate of covid in each city. Depending on the positivity rate, about 10-20% of the total staff works from home.”
India Post Payments Bank contact center operates with a strong workforce of around 140 employees. Easwaran Venkateswaran, COO at India Post Payments Bank says: “During the last 12 months, there has been a 30% increase in the total workforce at our contact centers besides the addition of a new site.”
Aviva Life Insurance has 16 people handling inbound calls and 2 people handling outbound calls at its contact center. The team is supplemented by its chatbot ‘ALISHA’ to help its potential customers. Kunal Anand, Chief Operations and Customer Service Officer at Aviva Life Insurance, says there have been no changes in the number of employees handling
outbound calls whereas the number of employees for inbound calls was 19 till April 2021. He adds that over a period, the company has seen a shift as customers prefer digital contact over calls now.
CONTACT CENTER STAFF ON WFH
Nearly 80% of the contact center staff at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance is working from home, and the rest from the office as they voluntarily opted for it. They are all vaccinated too. The company is conducting vaccination drives and hoping that once all its staff members are fully vaccinated, the percentage of staff working from the office would increase. KV Dipu, Head – Operations & Customer Service at the company says: “We will consider the same only if it is safe for the employees and the WFH option will be enabled as and when required.”
According to Kunal of Aviva Life Insurance, lockdowns have caused the entire working model to change, and being a peoplefirst organization, safety of the employees is the topmost priority for the bank. “Since the lockdown was announced last year, our entire contact center staff is working from home. A decision whether to continue with the 100% WFH model or to move to a hybrid model in the next 6 months cannot be taken right now because of the unpredictive nature of the lockdown situation. We will take a proactive decision depending upon changing environment and lockdown relaxations, keeping both the customer and employee interests at heart,” says he.
At Equitas Small Finance Bank, 100% of the contact center staff is worked from home. The bank had seamlessly shifted to WFH mode as a basic infrastructure for such a shift was ready. It opened offices for employees who wished to get back to the office when the first covid subsided as better internet connectivity, bandwidth and office infrastructure helped improve the team’s productivity.
Dheeraj explains that the second wave saw the bank return to WFH for about 3 months and now about 50% of the team is back in the office. The bank is looking at a hybrid model as a long-term solution as it helps the bank to engage with the `gig talent pool’ and improve its capacity across regional languages. “In general, the overall headcount is set to increase by over 30% as we are witnessing a strong business momentum in terms of customer acquisition. We are also reasonably clear that WFH is not as efficient as working from office,” he says.
REMOTE MANAGEMENT
Adapting to the prevailing scenario required changes such as managers being provided with an admin account with the required floor management access. Kunal says additionally, managers are using the dashboard to do the routine floor management enabling them to manage
work efficiently even when teams are working remotely.
Easwaran of India Post Payments Bank says while workflow management processes were made more rigorous, managers across locations synergized the overall operations in the bank.
Equitas Small Finance Bank uses various collaboration tools like video conferencing solutions, chat messenger, remote folder access, and dashboard to view team and call performance. Apart from these, the bank’s entire training module moved online to ensure the staff was continuously trained on new product launchers and service enhancements. Dheeraj says the bank heavily relied on creating online workgroups to ensure unhampered collaboration and instant resolution.
KV Dipu says online collaborations tools were enabled at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance to help drive better governance and engagement with employees. Additionally, online learning tools and SOPs were designed to manage skill-based refreshers, says he.
Puneet of Kotak Mahindra Bank shares: “Our ‘home agents’ were authenticated and authorized to handle interactions and were remotely supervised by team leaders and managers. The automated supervision of home agents ensures strict adherence to company policies.”