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Ant Marketing |
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Company Background |
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 Established
in 1989, Sheffield-based
telemarketing business
Ant Marketing began life
working on small
campaigns and
appointment setting. The
company expanded very
quickly, growing from 20
staff working on a
couple of campaigns to a
business with four
offices and
approximately 1000
staff, now dealing with
large campaigns to a
cross-section of
organisations. Ant
Marketing deliver both
inbound and outbound
services and specialise
in areas such as market
research, appointment
generation and list
cleansing. Sales and
marketing services are
delivered to a range of
sectors, including
telecoms, utilities and
insurance companies, as
well as survey work for
national government.
Like any successful
business, Ant has
objectives and growth
targets. However, they
came to a point in which
they felt that their
technology was holding
them back. They had more
work coming in than
their legacy systems
could handle. Since
then, they’ve addressed
these issues and
according to the Head of
IT, Luke Sayers, “The
issues we had to face
hindered us – our
relationship with
TouchStar was the
beginning of a process
that has seen us resolve
these problems. Now
rather than having to
turn work away, we’re
expanding and looking to
open a fifth site.” |
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The Business Challenge |
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Despite the fact Ant
operate in an extremely
competitive sector in
which companies often
face client churn, there
are a number of other
significant business
challenges. |
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Employee churn has
traditionally been an
issue in the sector due
to the demands of the
agent’s job and the fact
that many agents are
relatively young.
Recruitment of staff is
a major issue as
companies have to keep
up with the churn rate,
but also provide
intensive training - as
outbound campaigns
require a type of person
with a certain amount of
drive and personality. |
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A further major business
challenge is the
regulatory agenda, with
compliance being a major
issue due to the media
interest in the ‘silent
calls’ phenomena.
So-called ‘silent calls’
occur when automated
diallers call a number
without an available
agent being ready. These
‘dropped calls’ are now
subject to regulation by
OFCOM (the UK
communications industry
regulatory body) with
operators having to
comply with a 3% dropped
call rate. Ant’s
previous dialler system
wasn’t capable of
keeping up with OFCOM’s
old permitted dropped
call rate of 5%, never
mind the revised 3%
rate! |
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Luke Sayers, Ant’s Head
of IT, said, “Our old
dialler solution wasn’t
capable of adhering to
even the old rules, let
alone the new rules.
With some degree of
manual intervention we
could keep close, but
couldn’t actually manage
it. That was one of the
factors that influenced
the decision to move
over to the TouchStar
dialler solution.” |
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Why Did Ant Marketing
Choose TouchStar? |
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Ant already had a
dialler solution in
place but were looking
to upgrade and the
compliance issue was a
major factor. However,
the new solution also
had to be able to
increase dialling speed
and functionality. |
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The selection process
involved looking at some
huge solutions geared
toward 1000 seat contact
centres, but Ant felt
that the nature of their
clients’ business
requirements – quick
campaigns and rapidly
changing criteria -
meant that they needed a
solution with more
flexibility. At that
stage Ant started
talking to TouchStar. |
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Ant felt that their
previous supplier only
provided the initial
solution, whilst they
were keen to grow,
develop the system and
add extra features.
Therefore, the value
added service wrap
offered by TouchStar was
the clincher. Ant
required more than just
a maintenance package,
as in such a fast moving
sector there needs to be
continuous improvement
so the initiative is not
handed to competitors. |
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Ant found that clients’
requirements were
becoming more
sophisticated and their
old system wasn’t
capable of dealing with
it. They found that when
they wanted their
service provider to try
and address these issues
they weren’t
forthcoming. |
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Luke Sayers said: “What
really impressed us with
TouchStar was their
flexibility in terms of
coming on board,
listening to what we
wanted and needed and
understanding our
business objectives.
Their ability to turn
things round has
reassured us and given
us the confidence that
we can change and get
where we want to go.” |
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Our Solution |
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The three key things
that Ant has experienced
from TouchStar Connect
are flexibility,
scalability and
reassurance. |
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Luke Sayers said:
“TouchStar offered us
lots of value adds. So
now we have all these
extra features - things
which before seemed
impossible are now no
trouble at all.” |
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Such an example involves
inbound work in which
some of the
functionalities mean
that Ant can carry out
complex IVR routings. So
if someone is in a queue
and they’re waiting for
more than two minutes,
they can be diverted to
an answer machine and
Ant can get agents to
call them back.
Campaigns are shut down
automatically at night
and calls are diverted
to an answer machine.
These things are done
automatically - Ant know
that they are not just
compliant within
industry guidelines, but
going beyond them. |
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TouchStar Connect allows
Ant to make live updates
of the data unlike some
solutions in which the
data has to be reloaded
each morning. Ant has
found this a massive
help with compliance, as
some clients ask them to
TPS their data. Ant is
now finding that they
are now well beyond
where they were with
their previous dialler
solution and they are
benefiting from new
functionalities. |
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Luke Sayers adds: “The
guys at TouchStar tell
us we’re only using 10%
of the system’s
capability at the
moment, so they see it
as an ongoing
relationship to help us
use the bits that are
most relevant to us and
get the most out of the
system and the
relationship.” |
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Implementation |
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According to Luke,
“There were issues that
arose during
implementation due to
our previous systems and
structures. It was a
huge job to ensure that
everything was
configured and
compatible, but
TouchStar bent over
backwards to resolve
them. In fact they
worked 24/7 to make sure
that the implementation
was right. On top of
that, we needed to
understand what we were
doing – so it was a
significant learning
curve. The nature of our
business means that we
always have pressure
from clients to deliver,
so these things had to
be done as seamlessly as
possible and with the
minimum interruption to
service. |
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TouchStar worked
incredibly hard for us -
I’ve never known people
be so dedicated in doing
something. Our previous
system would go down at
least once a week for
half an hour, as a
minimum. We’ve now been
operating since the
completion of the
installation at the
start of June with three
diallers and no down
time at all. That is
unheard of for us. |
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I can safely say that in
every single area that
we’d want an
improvement, we’ve got
it. It’s well beyond our
expectations. In the
past it was ‘how can we
keep up, how can we dial
more quickly and keep
our customer happy. It
always felt as if we
were firefighting.
Whereas, now we can
offer the client
enhanced functionality –
value added services, at
no additional cost.” |
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Benefits of the
TouchStar Contact Centre |
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- Faster dialling
- Enhanced
functionality
- Limits downtime
- Flexible and
scalable – grows
with you business
- Suite of
value added services
(Non Geographic
Numbers – such as
0845, Least cost
routing, training,
Hardware/software
provision, help with
staff recruitment,
office furniture)
- OFCOM compliance
- Guaranteed level
of service
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Ant have seen their dial
time vastly enhanced. As
Luke Sayers explained,
“We’re miles up in terms
of performance and speed
of dial has gone through
the roof. We had a
customer who is a large
insurance company and we
ran their campaign on
the previous system and
we were struggling to
hit target. With the new
system we are nearly
double our target. There
have been other factors
involved in that – like
training and management,
but the majority of that
is down to the
installation of the new
system.” |
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Another factor that has
made a difference for
Ant is remote
monitoring. Their
clients can dial in and
listen to agents calling
their prospects. In the
past, such processes
could be hit and miss.
Now they know which
agent they’re listening
to and can report back.
This is reassuring for
Ant’s customers – and
allows Ant to deliver a
higher degree of
service. |
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With Ant’s old system if
somebody called them
back and requested to be
removed from the data,
it required somebody to
manually go in and
remove the details. Now
they can call up and
it’s done immediately
via an automated
process. |
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Another significant
benefit is that agents
experience less
downtime, so their
performance is better
and they get through
more calls so
consequently hit target
earlier and earn
commission. Though their
evidence is only
anecdotal at the moment,
Ant believes that this
will make a positive
contribution in terms of
reducing staff churn. |
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Luke Sayers continues:
“The level of service we
receive from TouchStar
is totally different. We
paid our previous
dialler provider a lot
for maintenance and we
found that we only
called them when
something unexpected
happened, as we’ve got
people on site who
understand how the
system works. What we
were finding was that we
knew more about the
system than them – so it
begged the question, why
were we paying all that
maintenance. With
TouchStar we’ve never
come across a major
problem like that and
we’ve got confidence
that they will sort it -
and quickly. Every query
has been met with an
instant answer or
they’ve presented us
with a range of options.
The support is in a
different league.” |
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“And, to say it’s cost
effective is an
understatement!
Previously we were loath
to increase our number
of seats because we
didn’t think we were
getting value for money.
We’re now already
discussing extensions
because we’re so busy
with what we’ve got.”
Luke concluded, “It’s
increased our
performance across the
board – functionality…
fantastic,
uptime…fantastic, speed
of dialling…fantastic,
plus we easily meet the
3% drop rate.” |
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