COVID-19 Customer Confidence - Turning Covid Confusion to Customer Confidence

Managing customer service during a pandemic

While we as customer service or call center managers are familiar with business continuity and even in some business disaster recovery planning, pandemic planning was never something I ever thought I’d have to factor in.

Where did we begin?

How could we maintain confidence in our service levels not only to our customers but to our staff and stakeholders also?

Many times I’ve been told I’d pulled a rabbit out of the hat when resolving a customer, but predicting the coming months because of the wider scope and the uncertainty of impact this pandemic would bring had me reaching in my hat and grappling around.

This was not a one-man/one-woman job

At Ausloans, we as a team knew we needed a flexible plan to deal with COVID-19, ensuring we adapted to industry changes while installing calm confidence in our staff allowing them to gain an understanding of our customers' concerns in an uncertain economy and pass that calm confidence on.

We found we were no longer pulling things out of our hats but rather wearing many hats

Up Skilling and cross-skilling to provide practical solutions for changes in the industry, sharing knowledge and strengths to allow us to reach out to customers to install a level of certainty in our ability in keeping them at the heart of all we do by being there and still providing and sharing our expertise around the finance process.

Just like a magician needs his or her beautiful assistant to pull the rabbit from the hat, we needed that support in the call center, and we gained many, First our HR manager who became a valuable asset to our team as changes were rolled out. Brokers rolled up their sleeves, reaching out to all our enquirers ensuring strong service levels as our team battened down .. for the isolation, social distancing, and uncertainty that lay ahead

We grew into one strong team, learned and played on individual strengths, saw a growing reliance and willingness to commit to going over and beyond for the business we loved.

Was it magic or just the right formula derived from our CEO’s passion to ensure everyone should have the opportunity to achieve their financial goals even through the difficult times and a collaboration within our management team to brainstorm and execute our plan to sustain and succeed

We distanced, we sanitized, we serviced... We survived

The team moved the needle, we increased our customer's confidence by addressing fear through education, our NPS began to rise as we reach out and openly communicated with our customers

We grew as a business. as we embraced and developed our Zink technology to increase the productivity and efficiency of our people and processes.

We trialed work from home to accommodate changes in school closures and restrictions the virus lockdown threw at us all, we embraced applications such as teams and zoom to update train, and support our people internally and externally.

Time to reach into our hats.........and we sprinkled all of this with the magic of positivity, belief that we would still provide the best service, provide the right solution, locate the perfect vehicle and do so with limited disruption. While disruption erupted all around us we supported our partners and reinforce business relationships. Empathy was shown to the automotive trade as they also adapted to the huge sweeping changes and our sister states as Covid took a grip in our major cities.

Ausloans prevailed

Covid was no longer confusing for us or our customers because we continually updated knowing the importance of communicating. Fear changed to courage and we were able to continue to get the best deal for our customers. Uncertainties changed to confidence as we approved and settled each deal

We learned Covid at Ausloans stands for

Customer Confidence
Opportunities
Vision
Imagination; and
Dedication

The team has grown welcoming new faces and invigorated enthusiasm allowing us to deliver the best customer service and explore the once thought of as impossible. Ausloans moved forward through the new normal knowing service is crucial and committed to ensuring we are doing all we can to deliver.

So if I'm asked how we changed Covid confusion to customer confidence, It was Magic of course

The magic of Great Customer Service.