The Challenge
Europcar are one of the biggest car rental companies in the UK, so when they decided to move to a “one phone number” strategy, they needed to develop their own call routing system. At first, their self-designed call flow confused customers and resulted in thousands of calls being miss-routed and needlessly transferred every week, which naturally led to a significant increase in customer complaints.
Enter OnBrand
We discussed the issues with all relevant stakeholders and analysed the call flow as it was. After listening to live calls, speaking to the call agents and analysing Europcar’s stats, we highlighted that a number of tasks had been moved away from local branches to contact centres, yet this hadn’t been communicated to callers. This meant they were calling local branches, being placed on hold, and finally being routed to an offshore centre without understanding why.
With patience, understanding, and a little creative magic, we redesigned the entire call flow to fix the routing issue, reducing the overall number of options by 60%. We also introduced a brand new Tone of Voice and scripted the messages in a style that customers trusted and understood, helping them remain engaged and choose the right option at the first attempt.
Key Wins
- An immediate decrease of 36% in mis-directed calls
- Neutralised complaints to “normal” levels after just 1 month
- Educated customers to business changes with on hold messaging
- Reduced on-hold times
- Successful deflection of calls onto contact centre, freeing up time in local branches
What They Say
“The pre-agent phone experience has a huge impact on the success of the call, and the retention of that customer. Getting it right is integral to influencing caller behaviour, and although the brand’s needs are different with every project, our experience has helped us build a strong methodology that achieves positive results – in both the short and long term aims of the business.”
Daniel Graham, Managing Director – OnBrand Group
