The facility, known as the company's customer care centre, occupies a large portion of a modern building on an office and industrial campus in the town of Bedwas, near Caerphilly. It provides the essential for providing high standards of service to customers and for building customer relationships and is accredited to ISO14001.
These customers range from thousands of SME's, public service sector organisations, local and national government, through to some of the UK's best known brand names.
Custom-built software
“This helps in making us able to give continuity to enquiries and to customers. 80% of our promotions are internal and we try to use the experience of our staff by moving them within the business to help on new contracts.”
The customer care centre is the hub of the company's operations which are carried out through 18 of its own recycling facilities combined with a network of over 500 recycling and waste service suppliers.
Commercial director Tony Watkins considers that the staffing approach is important. “We know we good systems and then the service has to be system driven. Good staffing is essential to that and we have invested heavily in the facility and the team.”
Key account managers for Severnside out in the field are encouraged to build a close relationship with the people in the customer care centre who look after the accounts of Severnside customers.
Nationwide operation
The centre ensures that collections of material, for recycling or disposal, are made and that any problems are resolved as quickly as possible. This involves liaising with Severnside's own collection crews or with subcontractors, all of which gives the company a nationwide operation.
The software and IT system, managed by Lewis John, is integral to this approach. More than 100,000 transactions carried out each month. A bespoke version of the Maximiser programme is used which allows a work ticket to be used the whole way through when tracking issues. These can range from issues of access and vandalism through to the need for extra uplifts and missed collections.
Mr Watkins notes that this “gives us an efficient automated route for checking all the way through the process that the work ticket is handled correctly and as quickly as possible.”
The company also provides for the monitoring of waste streams as required from customers. This can be for recovered paper and other recyclables as well as animal by-products.
Operating this service is not without its stresses and strains, Mr Watkins admits. “In any recycling and waste business there are stresses, especially when you have key performance indicators to meet for large national accounts, such as Tesco, and other key customers in the commercial and industrial sectors. There can be strong conversations but Kate's role is balanced between the customer relationship work within our depots and here at the call centre.”
Training
As part of the training process, call centre staff visit depots and field and depot managers visit the call centre.
While the tickets for various issue are a main part of the business of the call centre, Ms Dally says that a lot of other work is carried out including following through on positive and successful schemes. “We don't just focus on sites that have some problems. We also look at the sites with good results and best practice. This management information is very important to the company and helps us continually raise the standard across the business.”
Severnside's collection service is part of its wider remit which concentrates on recycling of paper based waste, such as cardboard. Mr Watkins, says: “It is important to note that our contracts are not for waste only. Our core focus is on cardboard and plastics and it is important to use. We are a recycling company in the facilities management business. By recycling we reduce people's costs.”
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