Enhancing Customer Service, Transforming Lives: UK’s LBBD Adopts Xdroid

Elevating Customer Service with Xdroid's VoiceAnalytics

Abstract

The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham (LBBD) council, serving nearly 200,000 residents in East London, sought to enhance the efficiency and quality of its Customer Service team, which handles over 300,000 calls annually. By implementing Xdroid’s speech analytics solutions, LBBD significantly improved its service delivery, quality assurance, and support for vulnerable residents.

Introduction

Client Background 

The LBBD council serves a culturally diverse population of nearly 200,000 residents in East London. The council’s Customer Services team provides advice and support on housing, financial, and general issues, managing over 300,000 calls annually. Committed to high service standards, LBBD follows its corporate vision: “One borough; one community; no one left behind.”

Challenge for Customer Service

The Customer Service is made up of 53 agents who recently switched from a ‘work from office’ to a fully ‘work from home’ set-up. The management team at LBBD previously relied on a random, manual sampling of calls for quality assurance, supplemented by an inadequate transcription service. Sabina Onwuka, Head of Customer Services, said, 

“I was thinking of a new way to conduct our quality monitoring, moving away from the traditional method of going in, searching for a call, marking it and giving feedback. The way data was broken down was not exactly how I wanted it to be either,” she says, adding that the old-school method didn’t “give a helicopter view of performance across the service or within actual teams.”

The transition to remote working also presented challenges in monitoring agent performance and well-being. Additionally, LBBD sought to better identify and support vulnerable residents, many of whom face significant barriers to accessing services due to high physical and financial constraints and language diversity.

I was at one of the technology summits and Ian Taylor from Avoira presented Xdroid, I looked at it and thought this actually fits what I’m looking for,” recalls Sabina. “It can do exactly what I want to and more.”

Goals and Objectives for Customer Service

Client’s Goals

  • Improve quality assurance and performance monitoring.
  • Enhance customer service & support for vulnerable residents.
  • Streamline call handling processes.
  • Ensure compliance with GDPR and other regulations.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • Accuracy and comprehensiveness of call transcriptions.
  • Reduction in time spent on manual call sampling.
  • Improved identification and support of vulnerable residents.
  • Enhanced first-call resolution rates.

Solution

Approach for Customer Service

Xdroid’s cutting-edge speech analytics tool, VoiceAnalytics was chosen for its ability to capture, transcribe, score, and report on all 300,000 calls handled annually by LBBD’s contact center.

Collaboration, Execution and Implementation

Our implementation partners and experts at Avoira worked closely with LBBD to tailor Xdroid’s solution to meet the specific needs of LBBD. This included creating custom tags to identify vulnerable customers and functional reporting features for data collection, GDPR compliance, and appropriate greetings. This implementation provided insights that informed internal processes and improved customer service delivery. Xdroid’s solution also went the extra mile to keep tabs on and facilitate agent well-being. 

Sabina praised the solution saying, “One thing that really drew me to Xdroid was its ability to support agent wellbeing. There aren’t many systems out there which can identify when an agent has had so many horrible calls and then alert their manager and say ‘Hey, you need check on your staff about this’.”

Xdroid’s solution was seamlessly integrated into LBBD’s existing telephony system. Comprehensive training was provided to ensure effective use by performance coaches and agents. The solutions’s custom tagging features and comprehensive reporting tools were utilized fully. This helped the LBBD team fully comprehend their interactions with the residents. They could understand the needs of the residents better and even uncover issues that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. 

“It went really well. The solution really focused our eyes on things and gave us insights in areas that we had not picked on, to be honest, it wasn’t a surprise to me because we weren’t measuring a lot of our calls whereas with Xdroid it’s the whole shabam!”, Sabina added. 

Xdroid was also able to flag and identify repeat calls from residents. This enabled LBBD to dig deeper and investigate the underlying issues and solve them more efficiently. 

Sabina commended Xdroid in this regard saying, “It was definitely an eye-opener to understand what was being said, how it was being said and for Avoira to give us recommendations while building the tags. It gave us a whole new view of what we’re doing and how we’re measuring it.” 

“One thing that really drew me to Xdroid was its ability to support agent wellbeing. There aren’t many systems out there which can identify when an agent has had so many horrible calls and then alert their manager and say ‘Hey, you need check on your staff about this’.”

Results

Xdroid’s solution delivered the desired results for the LBBD team on multiple fronts, both quantitatively and qualitatively. 

  • Successfully captured and analysed all 300,000 calls annually.

Sabina praised the solution saying, “Xdroid’s telling me what’s happening across my 300,000 calls. It captures exactly what’s happened as opposed to simply noting that someone called for a repair. There could be something else discussed in that call that we need to know and that’s captured.” 

  • Saved the time and resources previously spent on manual call sampling.

With the dearth of time and resources in the Public Sector, it is essential that the resources available to them are allocated and spent judiciously. With the solution taking up the task of analysing and reporting on the calls, the LBBD team can focus on the bigger picture and solve the issues faced by the residents based on the insights provided by the solution. 

  • Improved first-call resolution rates and customer service

Xdroid enables LBBD to be more perceptive to the needs of the resident. Sabina notes, “Rather than just marking a call, Xdroid allows us to be more proactive. If someone is repeatedly calling, we can alert, say, the Landlord Service Officer or the rent department and suggest they do a welfare check.” They will now be able to identify the needs of the customer faster and better, thus fostering higher first-call resolution and boosting productivity. 

  • Enhanced identification and support for vulnerable residents

Xdroid has helped LBBD understand what is being said and what’s not. Sabina recounts, “We’d already changed the culture of our staff, the way they think and ask questions to draw out things that our residents aren’t saying, what I call the silent periods. They will not necessarily say ‘I am vulnerable’. 

“Xdroid helps us identify those periods and develop a conversation, then, before you know it you’ve found out that actually this resident needs more than a repair, they need Council Tax support or to visit a community hub because they’re a single parent.”

  • Improved monitoring of agent performance and well-being.

Xdroid’s insights yield informed and self-motivated agents who are aware of their own performance. For the management, the solution highlights individual, team or departmental training needs. 

“Xdroid is helping us to change conversations in our one-to-ones so we’re not just coaching but mentoring. Our performance coaches will use the information from Xdroid to help them with coaching, support, training and any gap analysis that needs to be done. They now have a full view and can see if a service needs support in a particular area and then roll out a training programme.”

  • Automated QA

The holistic view of the customer service operation provided by Xdroid aids and automates the QA of all 53 of their agents. The agents now know that all of the calls they handle will be reviewed as opposed to earlier when many were unrepresented. Now their performance is checked and scored by the solution against different KPIs and scorecards. Automatic QA across the board also frees up time and resources for the management to focus on targeted performance and efficiency-enhancing tasks. 

  • Absolute Value for Money

As mentioned earlier, LBBD’s finances are stretched, as they are for all local governing bodies and authorities in the public sector, such considerations are important. With a prudent investment like Xdroid’s VoiceAnalytics however, they get to squeeze every last drop of value. Xdroid proves to be a favourable council investment. Xdroid also scores exceptionally well. “Xdroid is definitely worth the money,” Sabina concludes unequivocally.

“Xdroid’s telling me what’s happening across my 300,000 calls. It captures exactly what’s happened as opposed to simply noting that someone called for a repair. There could be something else discussed in that call that we need to know and that’s captured.”

Enhancing Cusotmer Service, One Interaction At a Time

Analysis

Insights for Better Customer Service

Xdroid provided LBBD with a ‘helicopter’ view of all customer interactions, enabling the council to identify and address underlying issues effectively. This comprehensive data capture was crucial for meeting the council’s objectives. The successful implementation of Xdroid’s solution highlighted the importance of detailed data capture and the value of custom tagging for specific needs, enabling more targeted and effective customer service improvements.

Conclusion

Xdroid’s interaction analytics solution transformed LBBD’s call-handling processes, significantly enhancing service quality, efficiency, and support for vulnerable residents. The implementation not only improved quality assurance but also freed up management time to focus on performance and efficiency-enhancing tasks.

Future Outlook

LBBD plans to continue leveraging the insights provided by Xdroid to further improve service delivery and agent performance. The council is committed to maintaining high service standards and ensuring ‘no resident is left behind’, in line with its corporate vision.

This case study illustrates how Xdroid’s solution not only met but exceeded the expectations of LBBD, providing a powerful tool for enhancing customer service and supporting the council’s mission of inclusivity and high service standards.

“Xdroid is definitely worth the money”

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