DRL was the big winner at the 2012 Customer Contact Innovation Awards in Blackpool last night, scooping the award for the overall winner.
Over 600 attendees witnessed the appliance retailer snap up the award for making it easier for customers to buy appliances online, reducing contacts per order by 29% through listening to customers and acting on this insight. The company also picked up the Innovation Award for Customer Experience.
Andrew Kirkcaldy, MD for DRL, said: “What we do is engage customers before their purchase and after. It’s about making the journey more streamlined.”
Organised by the Professional Planning Forum (PPF), the awards were presented at the Forum's 12th annual conference to celebrate outstanding initiatives that drive performance improvement by putting the customer at the heart of the solution.
Steve Woosey from the PPF said: “This is an exceptional achievement. DRL have a culture where everybody is looking to improve the service that they offer to the customer and customers themselves have the opportunity to make suggestions through social media. What’s more they are fantastically innovative in resolving these issues. Any contact centre professional serious about delivering for the customer could learn something from this approach.”
The winners were judged by a team of 17 experienced industry practitioners who visited and assessed each of the 19 shortlisted organisations.
Other winners of the night included:
The Innovation award for Social Media Innovation
Winner: BT Retail
The Innovation award for Resource Planning
Winner: Direct Line Group
The Innovation award for Service Transformation
Winner: Motability Operations
The Innovation award for Integrated Planning
Winner: nPower
The Innovation award for Customer Focus
Winner: Scottish Widows
The Public Service Innovation award
Winner: Transform Sandwell
Planning Forum Hero awards
Winners: Peter Doak, resource planner at Concentrix
Tim McKeegan, performance manager at Belron UK
Anita Yandell-Jones, performance manager at DAS
Tracy Johnson, operational planning manager at RSA
Julie Warne, head of reservations at Carnival UK.
