It’s the Schools Plus Customer Contact Centre’s 1st Birthday!!
We are celebrating having a whole year of handling enquiries centrally within the Contact Centre. This time last year the office was much smaller and filled with a lot less staff (and work!) The past 12-14 months have been massive developmentally for this side of the company and it’s come so far and grown bigger a lot quicker than any of us expected.
A year ago this email was sent by our Business Development Manager, Simon who oversees the Contact Centre:
“Dear all, following a successful visit by Odette and myself to ARK Wembley yesterday, I am delighted to confirm the Customer Contact Centre will be taking enquiries for ARK Wembley from 9am Friday 4th August.”
Although we had been working from the office before now this marked the start of the main core of the Contact Centre’s business starting. With over 100 schools within our partnership at the time it was a lengthy process transferring all the schools to the Contact Centre, a task that was finally completed in March 2018.
It was brand new territory for the business and introduced a new way of working for the on-site Venue Staff and other members of Schools Plus.
None of us were quite sure how it would play out exactly but we are now five months into handling the enquiries for our now 80 school estate and what a success it has been. We are capturing more business than ever with calls and emails being answered weekly 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.
The Schools Plus Contact Centre offers a unique, centralised hub of communication for the company, knowing that customers can get in touch and be dealt with correctly or directed to the right person. Anything from new enquiries, existing bookings and contracts, invoicing and payment enquiries are just some of the things that can be dealt with from the centre.
I don’t think anyone within the business thought that it would grow as much as it has and in such a short time. It has been super successful and filled a void in the company that we didn’t even know we had.
A year on and we are still continuing to grow; when new schools join our partnership they come straight onto the Contact Centre, we are handling all schools contract renewals and we are in the process of taking over the finance for each school.
We have an incredible team working within the Contact Centre; considering they are a maximum of a years experience everyone works so hard and they have gained an incredible grasp of the company, the values and what we are trying to achieve. As our schools are based throughout the UK we have the issue of many of our staff working remotely. The team working alongside Area and Venue Managers and other on-site staff they have created methods of working together that achieve the best possible customer experience both when customers talk to the Contact Centre and then when they are on-site with the venue staff.
The Marketing Department, although separate from the Contact Centre, we work in the same office sharing a few laughs, celebratory cupcakes and bowling evenings has also continued to grow. We are focusing on creating more site specific marketing plans and increasing the brand awareness of Schools Plus as whole.
We are now refining in-house policies and procedures to reach the full potential of the office. There is still so much more that we can be doing in regards to both the Contact Centre and the Marketing Department and we are so excited to keep pushing and expanding even more within the next year!
Who knows where things will be in August 2019!
If you want to get in contact with the Schools Plus Customer Contact Centre for any booking enquiries please do so on 0345 222 2323 or email on enquiries@schoolsplus.co.uk