Skånetrafiken delivers public transportation services in the south of Sweden and won the trade organization Kontakta’s award for the best customer service in Sweden. Each month their just over 70 employees receive between 55 000 and 60 000 contacts, and help their customers with increasingly complex questions. To achieve a high level of service they use digital tools that help the agents to quickly find the answer to the customer’s questions, and that provides them with insights that move the organization toward efficiency and enhanced service levels.
Skånetrafiken is an administrative body in the region of Skåne with the mission to provide sustainable travel to the people who visit, live or work in the region. Every day about 465 000 people travel on one of the 14 000 daily routes. Skånetrafiken is a long-time user of Telia ACE for managing telephony, chat, and Facebook. For the past few years, they have also been using the smart knowledgebase ACE Knowledge.
Three years ago they launched their own mobile app, and a new ticketing system, that turned out to be a great success. For travelers who are used to digital tools the new app made it even easier to plan trips and purchase tickets. But for those who are new to the technology, the threshold to download an app can be high. Therefore, Skånetrafiken’s agents need to be able to assist the customers with each step, such as how to use the appstore and how to approve digital purchases with the bank card.
“An important part of our mission is to care about everybody and to provide accessibility. Therefore, we must take different needs into consideration. Most of the time we can assist over the phone, but sometimes we suggest that the customer visits one of our physical stores to get help”, says Jim Nordqvist, Unit manager customer service.
The customer really wants first contact resolution
Susanne Jönsson is the Area manager for customer service at Skånetrafiken and both she and Jim notes that one of the greatest changes that have taken place in the customer service industry over the past few years is that the focus has shifted from availability to quality. Today’s customers are not satisfied with short waiting times. Rather, they are expecting to have a solution at the end of the first contact. And achieving great service that delivers on the customers’ expectations requires targets that moves the organisation in that direction.
“Of course, you can continue to measure call length all you want. But that’s not how you become number one in Sweden for customer service”, says Jim.
Via the Telia ACE survey tool, Skånetrafiken has gradually moved from hard to soft targets. Susanne points out the benefit of being able to measure the individual agents rather than the group. Jim says that the agents look forward to receiving the monthly follow up mail with feedback on their development.
“We use the information to celebrate what works well and to identify areas where skills need updating or when an agent needs additional support. It is entirely purposeless to identify problems without a constructive plan to tackle them”, says Jim.
A more complex workday in customer service
A few years ago, most of the people who contacted Skånetrafiken’s customer service had simple questions such as when the bus leaves from Kristianstad to Nymölla. Today the agents face much more complex questions such as why a bus will take a different route, why a train doesn’t stop at a particular station or why the price of the tickets has gone up.
“When I started my customer service journey the agents knew the answers to just about all the customer questions, and that’s not possible today”, says Susanne.
A greater complexity makes the job more interesting, but it may also create stress for the agents if they do not have access to the right information. Therefore, Skånetrafiken implemented the smart knowledgebase ACE Knowledge. Now information from all over the organization is gathered in the same place and is made available via smart search or the intuitive tree structure.
“If the answer is not available in the knowledgebase the agent knows that it is a new question that none of the colleagues would have been able to answer. That is comforting for the agent and also reduces the likelihood of a conflict with the customer”, says Jim.
“The smart knowledgebase is particularly helpful for agents who are new on the job”, says Susanne.
Information that flows throughout the organisation
Today Skånetrafiken has two employees who work fulltime with adding and updating information in the knowledgebase. But for the customer service agents to be able to answer the customer questions covering the rest of the organization, they need help from their colleagues.
“When the right information is available in ACE Knowledge it saves time and increases the quality of the customer experience. We also offer a smart FAQ on the website that we are constantly updating, to make it easier for the customers to find information on their own”, says Susanne.
Excellent collaboration generates world class customer service
Skånetrafiken is a long time Telia ACE customer and continuously work for the solution to generate as much value for their customers and employees as possible. Jim says that he appreciates having one contact person that truly understands their operations, who shares information about best practice, and who provides concrete suggestions for how to achieve the desired optimization.
“I probably speak more with our contact person Lars Alveman than with my mom, and I have a really good relationship with her”, Jim laughs.
“Telia adds a lot of value to us as a customer, which among other things made it possible for us to become number one in Sweden for customer service”, Susanne wraps up.
