Business to Business Financial Services Outbound Calling

Affinitas Marketing Solutions - CASE STUDIES

Client: Regional provider of consumer Cable TV, Phone, and Internet services

Situation: For several years Affinitas has been successfully providing customer care services for multiple divisions of a leading U.S. cable television, phone, and internet service provider. Affinitas was faced with a unique challenge when our Vice-President of Client Services received a call from the Director of Customer Care from a division for which we did not currently provide support. This division was in contract renewal negotiations with an ABC network affiliate, and the contract expiration date was quickly approaching. If the contract was not renewed within 48 hours, the ABC affiliate threatened to go black. The division anticipated a volume of inbound calls from a pool of approximately 150,000 customers that their internal customer care center would not be able to accommodate, and requested help from Affinitas in servicing these calls. In addition, the division could not have anticipated this scenario, and therefore had no budget dollars allocated. A nominal and very finite budget was assembled by borrowing from other portions of the division’s yearly budget, and Affinitas was asked to plan agent staffing accordingly. Ultimately, negotiations did fall through and the ABC network did go black upon contract expiration at midnight on 12/31/2008.

Solution:

In anticipation of and preparation for the network blackout, Affinitas established connectivity with the division’s customer database for real-time access to customer account details prior to the contract expiration date. This approach mirrors the set up with other divisions within the client company.
Three Affinitas facilities went live at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and serviced approximately 500 inbound calls per day over the next several weeks.
In an effort to best manage and maximize the client budget, Affinitas built a flexible agent staffing schedule using a combination of agents that could be moved in and out of existing similar client programs as call volumes dictated, as well as a pool of prequalified candidates and former or part-time agents that could be staffed in times of rapid ramp-up.
Affinitas identified trends and patterns in call volumes that allowed for increasingly accurate projections of future call volumes, and agent staffing was planned and adjusted accordingly.

Results: Not only did Affinitas prove its ability to be responsive and flexible, and to launch a program in an extremely limited amount of time, but also proved its ability to manage resources wisely with the intent of preserving and maximizing limited client budgets. Affinitas also was able to achieve performance standards exceeding the client’s own internal performance while remaining within budget, and subsequently was asked to continue servicing inbound customer care calls on a long term basis. Affinitas continues to service this client’s inbound customer care calls today.