LLOYDS TSB CASE STUDY

An estimated 11.5 million online bank accounts will be in use by the end of this year, which is more than any other European country. This demonstrates that internet banking has become an every day necessity and that it is here to stay. Lloyds TSB has taken this fact on board and in order to improve the service for customers it made the decision to address satisfaction from within the company and set out to provide staff with the best possible place to work.

With over 2000 branches in the UK, Lloyds TSB is one of the UK’s big four high street banks providing financial services to 15 million domestic and small business customers. Since December 2002 Lloyds TSB has been working towards achieving compliance with best practice standards set by CCA (Call Centre Association) for its three main call centres, which employ over 2000 people. The range of services that are provided by these call centres include PhoneBank (the bank’s person to person telephone banking service) and telephone support for online banking.

As a result, Lloyds TSB was recently awarded with CCA accreditation and is now recognised as being in line with CCA Standard: A Framework for Best Practice at its sites in Glasgow, Newport and Swansea. This is an operating guide, supported by the DTI, designed to provide a framework within which expectations of efficiency and customer service can be fulfilled. CCA Standard was launched to the call and contact centre industry in 2001 and to date 11 members have been accredited. It covers five areas - people, communication, culture, legislation and performance.

Lloyds TSB set up a dedicated project team in order to work toward CCA accreditation. The team consisted of people from HR and quality management from the three call centre sites. The first thing that the team did was to implement a gap analysis in order to ensure that the three sites all met the basic areas that the CCA Standard covered and that there were systems and processes in place that addressed each element of the framework.

The team found that a lot of work had already been completed and that many of the elements were already in place. The next task was to look at exactly what was being implemented in the areas of the standard across the three locations.

One of the main challenges that Lloyds TSB faced in this was how to reconcile the geographical disparity and reasons for departmental differences of its call centres. For each difference that was identified the team worked out the reasons behind it and whether it caused any problems in order to determine whether anything needed to be altered. For example, it was found that the induction procedures varied slightly across the three sites, so these were checked in order to ensure that they all complied with the framework. To ensure that the three call centres met the best practice guidelines careful attention was paid to training and development as well as working conditions.

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

The CCA Standard says that all employees should be supported so that they can achieve both their own personal and organisational objectives. Lloyds TSB provides all employees with access to Interchange, the company intranet. It contains information about training courses, job descriptions and vacancies (all of which are competency based), HR policies and staff benefits. Each agent has been trained on how to use Interchange so that they can make the most of the information contained on the site.

A great deal of investment has been made by Lloyds TSB in training schemes and career progression opportunities. For the agents in the three call centre sites, progression opportunities are more than purely contact centre-based. Agents have the chance to work their way through various levels gaining competencies as they go, culminating to team leader training. There are also a number of courses that will assist people to move ‘sideways’ from the call centre, either to a branch of head office position.

As well as being on Interchange, all jobs and training opportunities are also advertised on MMPC’s (multi media PC’s) which are standalone units situated in cyber cafés at each of the three sites where people can browse the information. The University of Lloyds TSB is also part of the HR department and is provided on a faculty basis in order to offer support for learning and development of staff.

A ‘multi-skilling’ scheme is also in place across the three call centre sites in order for agents to develop secondary skills, for example, working on a different telephone service. When volumes demand, the ‘multi-skillers’ will be asked to draw on their secondary skill and will move to work with a different team of people for a period of time.

WORKING CONDITIONS

The improvement of employee’s working conditions is something that Lloyds TSB has taken on board fully across the three call centre sites. This is in order to ensure that the physical environment is as comfortable as possible. The three sites are air conditioned and every member of staff has regular desk-audits every 6 months in order to check that their desk has all the right equipment and that it’s positioned correctly and working properly. Services such as a confidential harassment line, subsidized health and dental care are also offered.

The majority of the 2000 people that are employed at the sites in Glasgow, Newport and Swansea are permanent members of staff working a combination of full time and part time hours, as well as shift work. This encompasses early starts and late finishes in order to fulfil extended opening hours and even 24/7 coverage for some units. The three sites are patrolled 24 hours a day by security guards, with added security on the call centre floors to ensure that people feel safe while they are at work, whatever time of the day or night.

PREPARATION AND ASSESSMENT

In preparation for the 4 day assessment, the management teams involved with each of the three Lloyds TSB sites were briefed in detail about CCA and the best practice framework. The work that was taking place was well received throughout the three sites and was viewed by all at Lloyds TSB as a way to raise the profile and morale within the centres. It was also seen as a good external validation of the culture and standards within the organisation.

In order to inform everyone at the three sites about the work that was taking place, a small internal communications campaign was mounted. This ensured that all members of staff across the three sites had heard of CCA and understood about the best practice framework. More importantly it reinforced to all Lloyds TSB employees the benefits of working to the standard.

The four day assessment was conducted by BSI (British Standards Institution) assessors, and involved interviews with management of different departments as well as agents, some of which were interviewed without advance warning in order to gain a complete spread of opinions.

AFTER ACCREDITATION

Since receiving CCA accreditation Lloyds TSB aims to use CCA as a resource in order to access information on best practice and bench marking through its tutorials and workshops. In order to keep the accreditation current, assessors will visit the three Lloyds TSB call centres on an annual basis to ensure that they are still working within the framework. This will also be taken as an opportunity to look at any areas that need to be checked. The project team at Lloyds TSB will remain in place to monitor the situation on at regular intervals.

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