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Special Report: BSH Customer Service
Colin Embling, contact centre operations
Motivated
manager, supervising his team
to service
BSH Customer Service won the coveted
D&G Total Excellence and Quality Service
Award for 2009, with 94.5% of customers
giving it top marks. Anna Ryland went to
BSH Group’s customer service centre in
Kettering to examine how the system
works to deliver such results.
The central hub of the BSH by two separate departments to give an engineer the best the way we do and why we
customer support system is but now they are accessed on possible chance to complete had to made a number of
the Customer Service Centre one number. The centre staff, the job during the first visit,” changes to our service
in Kettering, dealing with all using a question tree, help the says Colin Embling. In fact, the system,” comments Steve
four of the company’s brands – customer to determine respondents to the D&G Clarke, UK service manger. In
Bosch, Siemens, Neff and whether they need to repair the Survey confirmed that 82.7% the past BSH customer service
Gaggenau. Opened in 2006, it appliance or whether just a of BSH repairs were was delivered by seven smaller
includes a contact centre spare part will solve the completed in one visit – call centres which worked with
handling engineer visit problem. “This complements creating a benchmark for the a group of self-employed local
requests, replacement spare engineers’ skills since service industry. engineers.
part sales, customer liaison advisors using the diagrams of The field repair work is The centre is open seven
and product advice. It also appliances gain in-depth carried out by 280 local area days a week; 8am to 8pm
provides a centralised location knowledge of the products. engineers who are directly Monday to Friday, 8am-4pm
for phone calls, letters and This also eliminates the need employed by the company but on Saturday and 9am-3pm on
emails related to customer for unnecessary engineer’s operate from home in their Sunday. It closes only on
service, and works closely with visits and expense for the local areas. Their work is Easter Sunday, Christmas Day
the BSH HQ in Milton Keynes. customers,“ explains Colin coordinated by 15 area and New Year’s Day. “This
Other back up staff, based in Embling, contact centre managers who also supervise greatly helps with customer
Kettering, provide support for operations manager. the BSH service partners that satisfaction levels. Moreover, it
field service engineers and IT The information captured by service the three brands in smoothes the demand peaks,
services. the call centre staff booking the remote areas of the country. and especially on very busy
calls is reviewed by a team of The Gaggenau brand has its Monday mornings when we
The system professional engineers (the own dedicated service support receive a quarter of all our calls
Customers come into contact ‘pre-prep’ team) who look at network. – over five thousand of them,”
with the Kettering service the fault description and assign Each engineer has on says Colin.
centre when they place a call the parts which are needed for average between eight and ten
as a result of a problem with the repair – this is the problem service calls a day. The team
their appliances, less frequently diagnosis stage. This process Motivating such a large The key to the delivery of the
when they need spare parts. In lasts until 4.15pm allowing service network spread first class customer service by
fact, two-thirds of the centre’s necessary parts to be ordered throughout the country is not the Kettering centre is its staff.
work are repairs, and one third the same day and delivered an easy task. “The key is There are 84 people working
is replacement of spare parts during the night to the engineer regular communication. We in the call centre and eight
and accessories. In the past, responsible for the repair. “This make sure that everybody people in the customer liaison
these functions were handled process has been put in place understands why we operate team handling enquiries and
14 TheIndependentElectricalRetailer January 2010
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