Founded in 1903 as the Automobile Club of Victoria, RACV provides a broad range of financial and travel-related products and services to consumers. Originally established as a motorists’ social club in the early days of the automobile, RACV has a long history of providing roadside assistance services, insurance and tourism advice. RACV’s portfolio now includes several financial products, home services and a network of clubs and resorts. Its services extend beyond its 1.9 million members. RACV is very active in the communities it serves, providing financial, in-kind, and volunteer assistance to a broad range of charitable and community organisations in the State of Victoria.
As the face of the company and a member’s first point of contact, RACV’s 550 contact centre consultants handle approximately 4 million inbound and 2 million outbound calls every year. To ensure members receive a superior customer experience every time, RACV’s agents strive to answer 90 percent of all calls within 20 seconds. This high standard of customer service is one of the company’s core values.
Prior to the introduction of GMT, RACV was using a workforce management solution that failed to provide visibility into real-time staffing issues and limited the company’s ability to automate manual processes. As a result, RACV was spending money on unnecessary labour costs, as well as jeopardizing its service level and member satisfaction goals. For example, RACV contact centre team managers were unable to reliably forecast call volumes or create and administer accurate call centre consultant schedules. Nor could managers easily remedy consultant schedule adherence issues or match a member’s inquiry with the best qualified consultant. In addition, because schedule exceptions and absentee management were manual processes normally handled once a day, RACV contact centre team managers were unable to monitor real-time activities or act on that information in a timely and efficient manner to ensure all the contact centre operational goals could be met.
Based on these factors, RACV knew that replacing its existing antiquated workforce and performance management system and processes were key to achieving its objectives.
“To RACV, providing a quality member experience is of paramount importance,” explained Glenn Dolenc, RACV’s manager of systems and support. “For many of our members, our contact centre consultants are the only interaction they may have with us. Therefore, it is imperative we are able to handle members’ inquiries quickly and efficiently. Our previous manual processes did not allow us to effectively match call demand with staffing availability, which meant members frequently waited longer than we’d like. It was obvious that we needed a more systematic approach to workforce optimisation.”
Determined to find the right vendor and workforce management solution for the company’s specific needs, RACV began an evaluation of the leading solutions available in the market. As part of its requirements, the company needed a vendor with a reputation of accurate forecasting and precision scheduling. Further, the team needed a solution that could provide improved visibility into schedule exceptions, absenteeism and schedule adherence. Finally—and most importantly—the company placed the highest priority on finding a trusted partner that was committed to the same high levels of client satisfaction as RACV.
Throughout this process, GMT representatives worked hard to not only understand RACV’s functional and technical requirements, but also the company’s operational and business objectives. When it came time to select a vendor, RACV cited many key decision factors related to GMT Planet, including its forecasting accuracy, scheduling flexibility, real-time visibility into agent activities, and ease of use. Furthermore, RACV preferred how responsive and committed GMT’s professional services staff was to the company’s initial and ongoing success.
“It’s no exaggeration to say GMT differentiated itself not only on how closely GMT Planet satisfied our functional criteria, but also on how closely the team worked with us since they were awarded the contract,” explained Dolenc. “Of course, meeting our technical requirements was important, but what tipped the scales in GMT’s favour was that they asked good, penetrating questions; knew how to listen; and demonstrated throughout the process that they were keenly vested in our success. GMT has also been very responsive to our requirements for additional reporting to help us better manage our business. Since the time we first implemented GMT Planet, I can confidently say we made the right choice.”
Indeed, the deployment in the end lived up to the promise. The GMT team invested the time to understand precisely RACV’s detailed system and process requirements, as well as its operational objectives. GMT’s web-based consultant portal, the Employee Time Centre (ETC), gives consultants unprecedented visibility into their working hours, enabling them to view their schedules, request time off, and swap shifts weeks in advance giving them. Therefore, consultants are able to better plan their activities outside of work, resulting in improved employee satisfaction.
Offered Dolenc, “One of RACV’s guiding principles is our commitment to the communities we serve. Improving the work-life balance is one way we serve the community, and it has paid dividends through greater employee morale and reduced churn. Satisfied employees tend to result in satisfied members, so it’s a win-win from our perspective.”
RACV has also discovered that once managers adapt to the system, they soon leverage GMT Planet’s powerful analytics capabilities to drive business decisions. Dolenc concluded, “We have a lot of moving parts in our business. GMT has provided us an unprecedented view of our operations and the tools and training necessary to quickly make course corrections as the situation dictates. They’ve not only delivered on the promise of workforce optimisation, they’ve truly exceeded our expectations.”
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