Dressed casually in black top and jeans, she began by telling us that this was the Virgin way – t shirt and jeans. She also revealed she likes Marmite, Jimmy Choos and Red Bull and that her nickname is Sparkplug. Well, she certainly created energy in the room – it wasn’t just that her presentation was a good mix of video, PowerPoint and well chosen anecdotes, it was her drive and enthusiasm. TUANZ CEO Ernie Newman noted at the end of the presentation that she was the personification of everything she espoused.

So how does the contact centre contribute and enhance the iconic Virgin brand?

As Tichbon pointed out, Virgin Mobile doesn’t have a network and it doesn’t make the handsets, so customer service is their key differential. “At the end of the day the moment of truth for the brand is when they call our call centre.”

The Virgin priority is staff first, customers second and shareholders third. How staff are treated and how they are empowered to respond to customers is essential. Tichbon says the only script in the centre is for regulatory because the emphasis is on being personable. “Scripts end up creating robots,” she says.

Scorecard measurements such as saying the customers name three times in every call can actually turn off the caller and constrain the agent’s ability to build rapport. Newman also noted at the end of her presentation that the contact centre profession is probably the most over monitored, which at the end of the day only pleases accountants.

So relax a bit and allow the personable approach. Tichbon says that one of her agents sets the tone for her conversations by answering the phone “Hey, what’s up. This is Suzette.”

It all begins at recruitment and Tichbon suggests that here attitude is king. Good manners, good values – she joked that it would be easier if she could interview their parents! And during training don’t suggest to a new CSR that they treat the customer how they’d want to be treated, because not everyone is the same (hear, hear – I personally hate it when the Contact Centre agent repeats my name over and over in a call!).

But what if senior management finds the casual approach a concern, the fact that her centre receives 200 letters a month complimenting it on customer service is all the evidence Tichbon needs. Of course equations, such as the following from a research company in America, also help convince the CFO that a contact centre contributes to profit, not to loss:

5% employee satisfaction = 1.5% customer satisfaction = 0.5% revenue increase.

PHOTO: TUANZ Contact Centre Conference keynote speaker Nancy Tichbon with Contact Centre Committee chair Gay Reed-Barrance.