Case Study
Fibrus Networks matches high-speed broadband services with digital-first customer care
Client
Fibrus Networks
Project type
Digital Transformation
Product
Genesys Cloud
Overview
Building the critical infrastructure of the 21st century, Fibrus is investing more than £500m to bring high-speed digital services to towns and villages across Northern Ireland and the north of England. Drawing on leading Kerv Experience knowledge of Genesys Cloud, previous challenges like outages, poor data and reporting, and managing demand spikes are things of the past. Thanks to new digital channels, AI-powered automation, and gamification tools, the company is seeing greater employee engagement and tangible business benefits.
Genesys had no hesitation in recommending and introducing us to Kerv Experience, who quickly got onboard with our tight timescale. They looked at Fibrus as a customer, rather than trying to upsell stuff that we didn’t need on day one – unlike other providers who weren’t as practical or flexible.
Challenge
Historically UK service providers and cable operators have tended to focus on urban or suburban areas with high population densities. From a commercial standpoint, network build-out costs were a major investment that could take years to recoup. So, communities in rural and hard-to-reach areas didn’t enjoy easy access to high-speed broadband.
Fibrus is changing that. Maximising the use of assets such as telegraph poles and underground ducts, it delivers full fibre optic cable to the door, for quality and reliability that cannot be achieved any other way.
Keeping operations on track is the job of 130 customer service, sales, billing, and technical support specialists. However, productivity and service suffered due to weekly outages and poor reporting.
Stability was a major problem, and we’d struggle to cope during busy periods, or when service issues peaked during storms and high winds. We could just about work out how many calls we were getting and had no way of deflecting customers through self-service or digital channels. Even basic stuff like creating a new IVR recorded message or integrating other systems was incredibly hard.
Solution
To kick-start its customer and employee experience transformation, Fibrus reached out to Genesys as part of a competitive tender.
“We’d heard good things about their cloud platform in terms of its leadership, reliability, and integration in
this space, but needed to find a local partner,” Stephen Riley recalled. “Genesys had no hesitation in recommending and introducing us to Kerv Experience who quickly got onboard with our tight timescale. They looked at Fibrus as a customer, rather than trying to upsell stuff we didn’t need on day one – unlike other providers who weren’t as practical or flexible.”
Fully tested before going live, Kerv Experience specialists expedited a smooth eight-week migration, while avoiding overlapping charges from the existing Fibrus contact centre provider.
Fibrus’ new Genesys Cloud platform enables users to efficiently manage inbound and outbound calls, email and Genesys Web Messaging, WhatsApp, and Facebook conversations – all from a single desktop. Customers now complete identity checks through IVR, so they don’t waste time doing that with an agent. A Genesys out-of-the-box connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM has also helped personalise service and reduce effort.
When calls come through, we’re able to pop-up the customer’s CRM record and full account history on screen… so the agent doesn’t need to repeat questions, or ask about basic information that we already hold. It also gives us useful trend data, such as which customers are calling, how many times they’ve got in touch, and what they’re calling about..
Digital innovation doesn’t end there. A Genesys chatbot supports website FAQs, while also identifying customer intent and triaging Genesys Web Messenger conversations. Other new capabilities include call and screen recording, plus offering customers the option of a callback. Also, with Amazon Polly text-to-speech analytics, Fibrus can track keywords and customer sentiment, intercepting potential escalations and taking preventative action.
Result
Elevating employee experience has been another crucial part of the transformation. Long gone are the days of manually preparing and managing forecasts and work schedules on spreadsheets.
Powered by AI, Genesys Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) helps automate and streamline back-office operations. Especially when it comes to predicting demand spikes and making sure Fibrus teams are correctly resourced. Now, supervisors can create accurate forecasts in minutes, leaving more time to focus on agent performance, skill development and coaching.
Recording live call and screen interactions with Genesys WEM has been really useful. We can see which systems colleagues are using and the questions they’re asking and answering. Afterwards we can recognise what they’re doing well and show them what they could do better, as well as addressing knowledge gaps.
Similarly, by introducing gamification tools, WEM facilitates regular monthly competitions with leaderboards and prizes. Awards recognise achievements such as taking the most calls, collecting the most votes for supporting colleagues, or simply being an unsung hero.
“Our employees are more engaged, especially home workers who can sometimes feel isolated,” Stephen added. “That’s when attrition rates start rising. WEM and gamification really helps address that problem.”
Result
Likewise, Fibrus teams make more decisions based on real-time data and reporting. That includes over 100 wrap-up codes to categorise calls that help drive improvement projects right across the business. Improved data and performance visibility has also enabled the launch of a commission scheme, enabling employees to maximise earnings.
These newfound capabilities are already translating into solid business benefits. Fibrus has seen a 29% reduction in contact rates, releasing agent capacity and contributing towards a £630,000 headcount cost saving. Importantly, customer satisfaction hasn’t declined. In fact, quite the opposite. Net Promoter Score (NPS) has climbed 27% with Trustpilot ratings up 7%.
Empathy and ensuring vulnerable customers in remote areas stay connected is at the heart of personalised customer care. “Our agents love the documents section on Genesys,” Stephen concludes. “It’s easy to email customers step-by-step guidance on how to fix their broadband issues and then call them back to answer any questions and make sure everything is okay. We’ve had great feedback and customers appreciate it.”
The future’s looking even brighter. Tapping into the expertise of Kerv Experience, Fibrus plans to continue improving digital journeys and its use of AI. Potential new projects include making bots more conversational and the addition of Genesys Agent Assist for recommending next best actions toagents during live interactions.
Other possibilities include integrating Genesys with the company’s network monitoring systems. The end goal would be to enable bots to correlate outages by the customer’s surname and postcode and inform them the problem is already in hand – thereby, reducing effort and incoming contacts further still.
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Case Study
Fibrus Networks matches high-speed broadband services with digital-first customer care
Client
Fibrus Networks
Project type
Digital Transformation
Product
Genesys Cloud
Overview
Building the critical infrastructure of the 21st century, Fibrus is investing more than £500m to bring high-speed digital services to towns and villages across Northern Ireland and the north of England. Drawing on leading Kerv Experience knowledge of Genesys Cloud, previous challenges like outages, poor data and reporting, and managing demand spikes are things of the past. Thanks to new digital channels, AI-powered automation, and gamification tools, the company is seeing greater employee engagement and tangible business benefits.
Genesys had no hesitation in recommending and introducing us to Kerv Experience, who quickly got onboard with our tight timescale. They looked at Fibrus as a customer, rather than trying to upsell stuff that we didn’t need on day one – unlike other providers who weren’t as practical or flexible.
Challenge
Historically UK service providers and cable operators have tended to focus on urban or suburban areas with high population densities. From a commercial standpoint, network build-out costs were a major investment that could take years to recoup. So, communities in rural and hard-to-reach areas didn’t enjoy easy access to high-speed broadband.
Fibrus is changing that. Maximising the use of assets such as telegraph poles and underground ducts, it delivers full fibre optic cable to the door, for quality and reliability that cannot be achieved any other way.
Keeping operations on track is the job of 130 customer service, sales, billing, and technical support specialists. However, productivity and service suffered due to weekly outages and poor reporting.
Stability was a major problem, and we’d struggle to cope during busy periods, or when service issues peaked during storms and high winds. We could just about work out how many calls we were getting and had no way of deflecting customers through self-service or digital channels. Even basic stuff like creating a new IVR recorded message or integrating other systems was incredibly hard.
Solution
To kick-start its customer and employee experience transformation, Fibrus reached out to Genesys as part of a competitive tender.
“We’d heard good things about their cloud platform in terms of its leadership, reliability, and integration in
this space, but needed to find a local partner,” Stephen Riley recalled. “Genesys had no hesitation in recommending and introducing us to Kerv Experience who quickly got onboard with our tight timescale. They looked at Fibrus as a customer, rather than trying to upsell stuff we didn’t need on day one – unlike other providers who weren’t as practical or flexible.”
Fully tested before going live, Kerv Experience specialists expedited a smooth eight-week migration, while avoiding overlapping charges from the existing Fibrus contact centre provider.
Fibrus’ new Genesys Cloud platform enables users to efficiently manage inbound and outbound calls, email and Genesys Web Messaging, WhatsApp, and Facebook conversations – all from a single desktop. Customers now complete identity checks through IVR, so they don’t waste time doing that with an agent. A Genesys out-of-the-box connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM has also helped personalise service and reduce effort.
When calls come through, we’re able to pop-up the customer’s CRM record and full account history on screen… so the agent doesn’t need to repeat questions, or ask about basic information that we already hold. It also gives us useful trend data, such as which customers are calling, how many times they’ve got in touch, and what they’re calling about..
Digital innovation doesn’t end there. A Genesys chatbot supports website FAQs, while also identifying customer intent and triaging Genesys Web Messenger conversations. Other new capabilities include call and screen recording, plus offering customers the option of a callback. Also, with Amazon Polly text-to-speech analytics, Fibrus can track keywords and customer sentiment, intercepting potential escalations and taking preventative action.
Result
Elevating employee experience has been another crucial part of the transformation. Long gone are the days of manually preparing and managing forecasts and work schedules on spreadsheets.
Powered by AI, Genesys Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) helps automate and streamline back-office operations. Especially when it comes to predicting demand spikes and making sure Fibrus teams are correctly resourced. Now, supervisors can create accurate forecasts in minutes, leaving more time to focus on agent performance, skill development and coaching.
Recording live call and screen interactions with Genesys WEM has been really useful. We can see which systems colleagues are using and the questions they’re asking and answering. Afterwards we can recognise what they’re doing well and show them what they could do better, as well as addressing knowledge gaps.
Similarly, by introducing gamification tools, WEM facilitates regular monthly competitions with leaderboards and prizes. Awards recognise achievements such as taking the most calls, collecting the most votes for supporting colleagues, or simply being an unsung hero.
“Our employees are more engaged, especially home workers who can sometimes feel isolated,” Stephen added. “That’s when attrition rates start rising. WEM and gamification really helps address that problem.”
Potential new projects include building out Consumer Duty capabilities through generative AI, exploring self-serve options for card payments and the potential use of biometric voice technology to automate the identification and verification process. Skipton also intends to connect Genesys Cloud with its Microsoft Dynamics CRM system as it looks to capture customer data earlier. For example, when they move through the IVR process and queue for an advisor.
Our aim in the future is – way before they reach an advisor – to answer questions like, ‘What’s the customer’s intent? Do they seem angry or upset? What do we already know about them?’. That’s the assured way of showing real empathy
Skipton aims to quickly pilot new AI functionality such as predictive engagement to nudge customers on their website. The Genesys Cloud fabric, together with flexible free trials, allows Skipton to iteratively implement new functionality and easily measure success before proceeding to a full-scale rollout.
Kerv Experience brought innovative ideas that really challenged our thinking. For a regulated organisation operating in pretty tight risk and compliance frameworks that was refreshing.
With Kerv we went from a blank sheet of paper, no requirements, no contract or legals, to go live within nine months. That really was extraordinary.
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Event Video
Highlights from the CX Strategy Event, March 2024
What did we cover at the event?
Kerv, Skipton Building Society, Utility Warehouse, Genesys and Microsoft experts gathered at the iconic Tower of London to showcase how companies can elevate their CX strategies by utilising AI, Digital and Data strategies and implement data-driven empathetic customer experiences.
Watch the highlights reel to find out what we covered at the event and then get in touch with us to find out how you can start your own CX and digital transformation journey with Genesys.
Fancy coming along to the next one? Check out our Events page.
Want more info? Read the event blog.
Event Video
Highlights from the CX Strategy Event, March 2024
Introducing the team!
Our Kerv Experience project team are the brains behind all the successful Genesys projects we have under our belts.
As Gary Muchmore, Operations Director says, ‘(CX project implementation) is not something a customer undertakes every day, but it’s something we do every day.’
Take a peek behind the scenes at the remarkable colleagues that get our customers onboarded (and ensure it’s a bit of fun along the way).
To discover more about Kerv Experience and our Genesys expertise, click here.
Want to join us at Kerv?
Case Study
Fibrus Networks matches high-speed broadband services with digital-first customer care
Client
Fibrus Networks
Project type
Digital Transformation
Product
Genesys Cloud
Overview
Building the critical infrastructure of the 21st century, Fibrus is investing more than £500m to bring high-speed digital services to towns and villages across Northern Ireland and the north of England. Drawing on leading Kerv Experience knowledge of Genesys Cloud, previous challenges like outages, poor data and reporting, and managing demand spikes are things of the past. Thanks to new digital channels, AI-powered automation, and gamification tools, the company is seeing greater employee engagement and tangible business benefits.
Genesys had no hesitation in recommending and introducing us to Kerv Experience, who quickly got onboard with our tight timescale. They looked at Fibrus as a customer, rather than trying to upsell stuff that we didn’t need on day one – unlike other providers who weren’t as practical or flexible.
Challenge
Historically UK service providers and cable operators have tended to focus on urban or suburban areas with high population densities. From a commercial standpoint, network build-out costs were a major investment that could take years to recoup. So, communities in rural and hard-to-reach areas didn’t enjoy easy access to high-speed broadband.
Fibrus is changing that. Maximising the use of assets such as telegraph poles and underground ducts, it delivers full fibre optic cable to the door, for quality and reliability that cannot be achieved any other way.
Keeping operations on track is the job of 130 customer service, sales, billing, and technical support specialists. However, productivity and service suffered due to weekly outages and poor reporting.
Stability was a major problem, and we’d struggle to cope during busy periods, or when service issues peaked during storms and high winds. We could just about work out how many calls we were getting and had no way of deflecting customers through self-service or digital channels. Even basic stuff like creating a new IVR recorded message or integrating other systems was incredibly hard.
Solution
To kick-start its customer and employee experience transformation, Fibrus reached out to Genesys as part of a competitive tender.
“We’d heard good things about their cloud platform in terms of its leadership, reliability, and integration in
this space, but needed to find a local partner,” Stephen Riley recalled. “Genesys had no hesitation in recommending and introducing us to Kerv Experience who quickly got onboard with our tight timescale. They looked at Fibrus as a customer, rather than trying to upsell stuff we didn’t need on day one – unlike other providers who weren’t as practical or flexible.”
Fully tested before going live, Kerv Experience specialists expedited a smooth eight-week migration, while avoiding overlapping charges from the existing Fibrus contact centre provider.
Fibrus’ new Genesys Cloud platform enables users to efficiently manage inbound and outbound calls, email and Genesys Web Messaging, WhatsApp, and Facebook conversations – all from a single desktop. Customers now complete identity checks through IVR, so they don’t waste time doing that with an agent. A Genesys out-of-the-box connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM has also helped personalise service and reduce effort.
When calls come through, we’re able to pop-up the customer’s CRM record and full account history on screen… so the agent doesn’t need to repeat questions, or ask about basic information that we already hold. It also gives us useful trend data, such as which customers are calling, how many times they’ve got in touch, and what they’re calling about..
Digital innovation doesn’t end there. A Genesys chatbot supports website FAQs, while also identifying customer intent and triaging Genesys Web Messenger conversations. Other new capabilities include call and screen recording, plus offering customers the option of a callback. Also, with Amazon Polly text-to-speech analytics, Fibrus can track keywords and customer sentiment, intercepting potential escalations and taking preventative action.
Result
Elevating employee experience has been another crucial part of the transformation. Long gone are the days of manually preparing and managing forecasts and work schedules on spreadsheets.
Powered by AI, Genesys Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) helps automate and streamline back-office operations. Especially when it comes to predicting demand spikes and making sure Fibrus teams are correctly resourced. Now, supervisors can create accurate forecasts in minutes, leaving more time to focus on agent performance, skill development and coaching.
Recording live call and screen interactions with Genesys WEM has been really useful. We can see which systems colleagues are using and the questions they’re asking and answering. Afterwards we can recognise what they’re doing well and show them what they could do better, as well as addressing knowledge gaps.
Similarly, by introducing gamification tools, WEM facilitates regular monthly competitions with leaderboards and prizes. Awards recognise achievements such as taking the most calls, collecting the most votes for supporting colleagues, or simply being an unsung hero.
“Our employees are more engaged, especially home workers who can sometimes feel isolated,” Stephen added. “That’s when attrition rates start rising. WEM and gamification really helps address that problem.”
Future Plans
All projects for the contact centre are focussed on improving either customer or customer service agent experience. Caring for vulnerable customers in tough financial situations has long been one of the bank’s top priorities, and leveraging Genesys speech and text analytics are set to play a big role in that over the next six to twelve months.
“We plan to deploy speech analytics for topic spotting and keyword searches. It will also be a game-changer in terms of how we collect data and keep ahead of competitors, off the back of that customer feedback and sentiment.”
Digital development is an ongoing journey for Atom, with projects that will support customers and avoid any unnecessary frustration and distress a top priority. For example, by removing additional ID&V steps that customers go through with agents and authenticate based on initial app login alone. Thereby ensuring customers receive a seamless experience while simultaneously delivering Atom a big improvement from a quality, risk, and average handling time perspective.
Other new capabilities imminently to be put in place are canned chat responses and WEM gamification tools, along with AI-powered knowledge and auto-summarisations through Genesys Agent Assist. In recognition of its progressive strategy Atom bank won silver in 2023 for Best Supporting Team at European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards.
Banks are moving towards digital-first mindsets but tend to get held back by issues involved in migrating legacy systems. Whereas Atom was born digital. So we’re more agile and can execute at speed. And it’s nice to know we’ve always got Kerv Experience in our corner if we were to get stuck.
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