15 Ideas You Can Use From Bupa’s Contact Centre

If you feel it’s high time to give your day-to-day operation a refresh to boost employee morale, take a look at all the great tips and advice our Editor, Megan Jones, heard when she visited Jane Redgrave (Head of Consumer Retention) and her team to see how they are keeping their colleagues engaged at the Bupa contact centre in Staines (UK).

1. Ask Your Team ‘Where Did You Waste Time Last Week?’

A powerful question to add to the agenda of your weekly team meeting is to ask, “Where did you waste time last week?”

This prompt will encourage conversation around those routine tasks and processes with opportunity for time-saving improvements.

2. Experiment With How and Where You Host Your Meetings

If your meetings need a bit of a reboot, why not try switching things up a bit – just like the team at Bupa, for example:

3. Talk to Your Team About WHY They Gave Their Employee Survey Scores

To help better understand the stats and data captured in employee surveys, managers should take these scores back to their team and discuss them.

By asking questions such as “why did our team score this area so high/low?”, you can prompt honest conversations, dig deeper, and build plans off the back of these conversations to drive real improvement.

You don’t just have to wait for the annual company-wide survey either. Team leaders can ask their own mini surveys with questions such as “how happy are you?” and “what can I do to fix it?” in monthly 1-to-1s to help nip any issues in the bud.

4. Introduce a Workplace Adjustment Process to Better Support Colleagues

One of the ways Bupa supports their colleagues returning to work (e.g. from maternity leave) or struggling at work (e.g. due to ADHD) is through their workplace adjustment process.

This gives individuals access to a coach to help make necessary tweaks to their environment and set them up for long-term success.

These conversations cover everything from compressed hours and other flexible working arrangements, coping techniques, noise-cancelling headphones, and more – all to help colleagues bring their best self to work, every day.

As Giustina Turturro – Souter, Diversity and Inclusion Partner, comments:

“It’s so important to us all to help people be themselves at Bupa and reflect the communities we serve. It also takes a lot of energy to hide a condition, and we don’t want people to hide, we want them to use that energy at work! For example, to use their ADHD to find new ways of doing things.”

5. Circulate a 1-Pager Each Month to Recognize (Almost) All Religious Holidays

One way to promote diversity and inclusion in the contact centre is to create a one-pager every month of the cultural and religious events happening around the world – extending recognition and celebration beyond the high-profile holidays such as Christmas.

This is educational for everyone as, even if someone isn’t celebrating, there’s typically nice themes that can be pulled out that can benefit the wider team.

For example, a key theme of Ramadan is reflection, which can be the basis for positive conversations across the floor such as “what are you grateful for?”

6. Actively Support Your Agents’ Ambitions Beyond the Contact Centre

When colleagues start their Bupa career in the contact centre, it benefits everyone in the long run. That’s because, when they move into other departments, they understand the business products and problems, what customers think, how the wider business can impact the frontline, and more.

That’s why the leadership team at Bupa see the contact centre as a talent factory, recognizing that securing 12 months to 2 years’ service from a colleague before they move into the wider business is a win-win for everyone involved.

7. Rethink Your Language Choices to Make Brainstorming Sessions More Positive

Brainstorming discussions for driving change and improvement can quickly become heated if the conversation isn’t properly managed.

That’s where language choice and key phrases can help.

Spotlight on Jabra

“My headset is really good. It’s a super duper one!

It’s padded, noise-cancelling, and you can mute it by pushing the microphone up.”

Catherine Fenwick, Healthcare Consultant (wearing Jabra Evolve 240)

8. Help Your Team Pitch Their Ideas to the Wider Business

Pitching ideas to the wider business requires a level of skill that can be a barrier to innovation for those that don’t have these refined communication skills.

Managers can take proactive steps to address this by supporting their colleagues in communicating their ideas – from condensing ideas to help make them clearer, supporting with presentation skills, making sure any materials are on brand, and making introductions to relevant people to help get the idea off the ground.

It can also help for colleagues to “show” not “tell” the success of a trial. For example, by sharing call recordings so people can hear the difference and see the proof for themselves.

9. Introduce a Bridge Team to Help Agents Transition to the Floor

The Bupa team initially had a training programme of classroom learning and time in a model office supported by a mentor – before moving to join their colleagues on the contact centre floor.

However, they found that the transition was still a bit tough for new starters and quality would slump while they got up to speed.

To counter this, they introduced a new bridge team, where new recruits would receive additional support on the contact centre floor before officially finishing their training period.

For advice on how to successfully engage new starters and improve customer experience, read our article: Going From Induction to Onboarding

10. Run Top-Up Sessions for Managers on Handling Niche Situations

Don’t assume your management team know everything about managing people.

Everyone brings different skills and experience to their role, so it can help to run top-up sessions across the year to put the spotlight on handling niche situations.

11. Encourage ‘Up-and-Coming’ Ops Leaders to Engage With Key Stakeholders

Bupa run a training programme, internally known as the Ops Academy, to help up-and-coming ops leaders take their next steps in their careers, as well as nurture a structured approach to succession planning and holiday cover.

As Gaffer Patel of Bupa explains:

“The focus of the Ops Academy is for cadets to learn on the job and understand the practical elements of the role – not just the theory.

“In a broad training programme, cadets are trained to be operationally aligned, to understand the reasons why certain metrics are tracked, what good looks like, and more.

“I also encourage the cadets to think about their personal brand and relationships across the business by asking them “are you engaging with your stakeholders?” – all to help focus a collaborative and customer-focused mindset.”

12. Give Colleagues a Voice to Tell You What They Really Need

When trying to promote diversity and inclusion, some management teams make assumptions about what minority communities need – instead of giving people the chance to have their say.

That’s why Bupa appoints ‘champions’ to represent different communities across the business, meeting monthly to share best practice and discuss any barriers being faced.

This provides a safe space to regularly share any feedback and challenges from the floor, which is then taken to senior management to help drive new initiatives.

13. Run a Book Club to Support Diversity Awareness

Another great tip for education and understanding around diversity and inclusion is to run a book club to help spread the word about minority communities.

For example, at Bupa, the LGBTQIA+ network run a regular book club focusing on intersectional reading material to help people learn and better understand one another.

14. Rationalize Your Product Offering to Make Training Easier

Review your product offering, as this can have a positive knock-on effect on the level of information new recruits need to absorb.

A good way to improve your training process is to review your product offering, as this can have a positive knock-on effect on the level of information new recruits need to absorb.

For example, the team at Bupa are undergoing a rationalization process to help streamline their current product offering by more than 150% – making things simpler for colleagues and customers alike.

15. Share Ideas and Initiatives Across Multiple Sites

If you have more than one contact centre site, don’t keep innovation trapped behind closed doors! Instead, like Bupa, make sure ideas and initiatives are tracked and uploaded to a centralized platform to share with other sites.

This helps to make sure that great ideas aren’t lost (and efforts aren’t being duplicated) as everyone strives to work more efficiently and improve the customer experience across the entire organization.

For more best practices and other fun tips from other contact centres that we have visited, read our articles:

• Take Your Employee Experience to the Next Level – Lessons From Leeds Building Society
• 15 Ideas We Picked Up at WeAnswer’s Contact Centre
• 18 Ways to Reboot Your Contact Centre Operations From Fasthosts
• 10 Great Ideas Delivered Straight From Superdry’s Contact Centre

Author: Megan Jones
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman