{"id":546,"date":"2010-07-21T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T16:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mycontactcentre.com\/?p=546"},"modified":"2010-07-21T09:00:31","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T16:00:31","slug":"unamichcn-and-sanoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/unamichcn-and-sanoma\/","title":{"rendered":"Unamic\/HCN and Sanoma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unamic\/HCN and Sanoma: experimenting in an experimental garden<\/p>\n

Working together for an outsource deal<\/p>\n

Text: Erik Bouwer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Companies that partially or totally outsource their client contact, need to choose where to draw the line: which processes will stay in-company and which responsibilities will go to the service provider? Publishing company Sanoma threw in its lot with a new service provider, but wished explicitly to choose for a partner with whom they could develop new ideas in order to give the client contact an added value. Unamic\/HCN and Sanoma developed the so-called \u2018pilot factory\u2019.<\/p>\n

With the transition to Sanoma\u2019s new service provider, the new cooperation is divided into two phases: \u2018make it work\u2019 and \u2018make it better\u2019. General Manager Simon Verzijl of Unamic\/HCN explains that \u2018make it work\u2019 means that you bring order to the base: accessibility, settlement time, client satisfaction. During the first phase the settlement time was dealt with, which lead to a reduction of 30% in the average conversation duration, amongst other things by implementing \u2018first time right\u2019. The second phase would concentrate on innovation and optimization.
\nSanoma also wanted to give the client contact an added-value. The publishing company had a good marketing team with lots of new ideas. Together they thought about not immediately carrying out ideas in a broad sense, but to test them in a so-called pilot factory. Therefore a separate environment with a dedicated value manager was set up, including some contact centre agents and team members. The team, that only has one goal – namely developing and testing as good as possible the concept that the marketers have thought up \u2013 has cooperated closely with the marketers and data-analysts of Sanoma. One of the starting points was offering as much freedom as possible: this even goes so far that the team can determine when they start working and when they take a break.<\/p>\n

Making and testing plans<\/strong>
\nThe marketers come up with a plan for a campaign, supported with a business case. For such a campaign, that Sanoma wishes to approach its clients with, needs to be determined how the conversation should be held, what the product must look like. By working with the proposal on a small scale in a live environment, the business case of the marketers gets tested. An example is making the most of opportunities that present themselves during conversations with clients who call for an address change. Simon Verzijl: \u201cThis is probably a good moment to offer a magazine about housing. Sanoma has different publications in that category that could be offered to different client profiles. Reality has shown that in ten to twenty percent of the cases a new subscription can be sold to clients who call for an address change.\u201d This gives the client contact an extra value that was not spotted right away. The same is true for cancellations: when a certain young adult magazine is not relevant for the client anymore then it is possible to check which magazines are. Where cancellations are concerned Unamic\/HCN now realizes a conversion in 18% of the cases, that does not have a negative effect on the consisting turnover.<\/p>\n

Permanent pilot-plant<\/strong>
\nAt the pilot factory, outsourcer Sanoma and service provider Unamic\/HCN take a look, in reciprocal harmony, at how these actions need to be organized in detail. They can also determine whether or not longer conversations are profitable. The creativity mainly comes from Sanoma: the marketers are in the driver\u2019s seat. Unamic\/HCN especially looks at how an offer can be cloaked as good as possible in a conversation. Unamic\/HCN also uses its own ideas about the different client types as they are distinguished in the Sanoma database. This makes the pilot factory a permanent pilot-plant with room for small-scaled optimization. Because of this it is possible to prevent a campaign to \u2018drown\u2019 on a work floor with sixty seats.<\/p>\n

Long-term cooperation<\/strong>
\nAlso campaigns that will be used in a broad sense after the pilot phase is finished are followed-up by marketers. Exactly because cooperation relationships in client contact outsourcing are becoming more long-term, both parties need to be prepared to invest in knowledge about each others\u2019 processes. With long-term contracts both parties have to deal with each other for a long period of time. After some time the contrasts will also become clear: the outsourcer wants to save (some more), the service provider wants to earn (some more). Testing new ways to generate extra turnover together works favourable in this case and it is a good counterpart for the creation of contradicting interests, where the outsourcer as well as the service provider want to increase their profits and want to handle client contacts in the most efficient way possible.<\/p>\n

New ideas<\/strong>
\nAnother example is sending cancellations: let the client no longer cancel via mail \u2013 which generally leads to a threshold to cancel \u2013 but let him call. This creates the opportunity for personal contact and also offers possibilities for up and cross selling. From this point of view, the telephone \u2013 that was traditionally considered as labour-intensive and \u2018expansive\u2019 by the contact centre sector in comparison with web self service or mail \u2013 is totally back again. At the basis of a well functioning partnership there is more than a good set of agreements. Unamic\/HCN has expressed its own thoughts on \u2018the ideal client\u2019 in a couple of keynotes. Also Sanoma saw this click as important. Even so important that during the RFP-phase workshops were organized with about five teams \u2013 consisting of IT professionals, trainers and delivery managers \u2013 that needed to cooperate with their counter partners. Verzijl: \u201cIt was about reports: what did Sanoma\u2019s employees think of the cooperation? What did it feel like to attend a workshop?\u201d The fit between both cultures seemed to be in the flexibility, openness and informal cooperation. This good atmosphere should also make it possible to talk openly about mishaps, like extra costs as a result of process disruptions.<\/p>\n

About Sanoma and Unamic\/HCN<\/strong>
\nThe cooperation between Sanoma and Unamic\/HCN was awarded with a Dutch PON\/OM Outsource Award last summer. Especially the pilot factory impressed the jury. With over 80 magazines and 200 websites Sanoma Uitgevers B.V. is the biggest multimedia publisher in the Netherlands. In 2008 they had a turnover of 515 million Euros. With over 300 magazines in 13 countries the Finnish media group Sanoma Magazines is one of the biggest magazine publishers in Europe. Unamic\/HCN is active in the field of business process outsourcing of client processes and has branches in the Benelux and offshore branches in Suriname and Turkey.<\/p>\n

More information at www.unamic.com <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Companies that partially or totally outsource their client contact, need to choose where to draw the line: which processes will stay in-company and which responsibilities will go to the service provider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}