By the European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards

2020 has seen a phenomenon that the world would never want to experience again. The coronavirus pandemic ripped through every country. Never has our industry seen so many people respond so quickly to a crisis.

The customer contact industry demonstrated just how agile and reactive it can be. Whole contact centre operations migrated to homeworking within days, home offices were created in the most unlikely places and customer service teams put their customers ahead of their own challenges.

Thanking your colleagues for what they did in responding to this crisis is not only the right thing to do but will give them a sense of pride in their job. The European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards realise that there are few opportunities to thank teams publicly, and so are delighted to give the industry the chance to enter five new categories this year.

Read on to find out more or visit www.ecccsa.com.

Responding to a Crisis – Supporting Customers

All forecasts and predictions on interaction volumes were challenged when the coronavirus hit. Some organisations saw a sharp decline in customer contact almost immediately. For others, customer interactions grew in epic proportions. Customers were anxious and emotional, and concerned about the present as well as the future.

As a result, contact centre and customer service operations had to quickly adapt their policies and processes, be more aware of customers’ individual circumstances and adjust their approach to quality to meet the needs of their customers.

Which team or teams in your business went above and beyond to support customers this year?

Responding to a Crisis – Supporting Colleagues

Much has been discussed about the mental wellbeing of colleagues during the pandemic, especially for those that have a total change in their work environment.

Many organisations were quick to support their colleagues through engagement programmes and individual teams have worked hard to support each other. You may have a team of people within your business who moved heaven and earth to make sure colleagues were supported – why don’t you thank them by nominating them for this award?

Responding to a Crisis – Providing Leadership

It was your leadership team that led how quickly and how well your organisation responded to the coronavirus. Although many people were in a state of shock at the start of the pandemic, leadership teams across Europe recognised the need to respond quickly and map a path to enable the business to continue to serve its customers.

You may be a member of that leadership team or you may have a team of leaders that you want to thank for their swift and clear action that gave reassurance to colleagues and customers. Why don’t you nominate them?

Responding to a Crisis – Supporting the Community

The coronavirus crisis brought the best out of many people. It was clear that there were some communities that desperately needed support to help them through this difficult time. Customer contact operations recognised that they could help and there are countless stories of teams of advisors being deployed into the community to provide services to those that needed it most. Here’s an opportunity to recognise and thank those teams.

Responding to a Crisis – Best Partnership Solution

Whether you’re a customer contact operation or a solution provider, if you worked together to implement a technology solution that enabled the operation to continue to service customers through the pandemic then you may want to thank the team involved. Working through the barriers, being responsive and working as a team would have been critical to enable operational continuity when everything else was changing. Here’s your chance to thank those that supported and delivered that transition.

Although the pandemic has been the biggest disaster to hit the world in a century, there are many examples of kindness, where humanity has broken through the storm. And it’s these acts that the ECCCSAs want to recognise, and that’s why this years’ programme is giving you a chance to thank those people that have gone above and beyond.

The awards are accepting nominations right now until the end of August. You can take advantage of an early bird offer if you commit to entering before the end of June and you can still edit your entry until the deadline.

There is support available through the website www.ecccsa.com and this Friday you can join a webinar with the Chair of the Judges, Ann-Marie Stagg, and the Head of Operations, Jackie Pringle.

Register for the webinar here: https://www.ecccsa.com/webinar/