Node4 delivers fully integrated Webex contact centre for TMTI

Talk Me Through It (TMTI) is a returns prevention company. It provides third-party pre and post-sales customer support services to 23 clients. These include large electrical goods retailers such as Argos and ASDA, plus electronics manufacturers such as Vestel—an international TV manufacturer for companies including Bush, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Alba.

“Our contact centre handles around 10,000 calls each week,” explains Gareth Wemyss, Contact Centre Manager at TMTI. “Customers might get in touch because they don’t know how to operate a new device or if they’ve lost the instruction manual for an older appliance. We also deal with more complex issues like software updates or faulty components.”

He continues: “Agents can fix over 80% of customer issues over the phone. This means we play an important role in helping our clients maintain higher margins while protecting the environment by reducing the likelihood of goods ending up in landfill.”

Node4—good listeners who understood our complex business

Each TMTI client has different customer support needs—some even have different opening hours, so Gareth is the first to admit that it’s a complex business. “Previous contact service providers haven’t always appreciated this,” he recalls. “However, Node4’s team took the time to learn how we operate and really did their homework. The result is a single contact centre that can support multiple clients and their unique requirements. It also integrates seamlessly with our wider IT and CRM infrastructure and can evolve alongside our business. It’s an absolute dream and couldn’t be more different from our previous solution.”

Improved SLAs and contact centre reporting

Gareth recalls that the previous solution’s reporting and analytics weren’t always accurate. “We tested it several times and kept getting unreliable results. Anyone who’s run a contact centre knows the importance of accurate SLA and KPI data, so you can imagine how frustrating this was for us. For example, in our old system, the time to answer was recorded from the moment the call hit the queue to when the agent answered the call. That’s not time to answer; that’s time on hold. Little things like that soon start to skew data, creating an unfair picture of agent responsiveness.”

He elaborates: “Data is always our number one priority for our clients, so we’re delighted that Node4’s contact centre deployment delivers much more detailed information and far more accurate reporting. This includes dropped calls, calls answered and calls waiting.”

Gareth and his team have also seen significant, quantifiable improvements since Node4 installed the Webex solution: “We’ve reduced the average answer time by 27%, cut the average queue time by 18% and trimmed the average wrap-up by eight seconds. All these stats are far more accurate and reflect everyone’s hard work. Now that we trust the data, we can also make more effective use of Power BI dashboards, which helps further with our reporting and client insights.”

Greater visibility on agent call handling trends

Access to reliable call centre data also helps Gareth and his team ensure calls are distributed fairly across all agents. “On our old platform, agents could group in and out of different client support areas as they saw fit. We found some were avoiding more complex, technical calls, which wasn’t fair on other colleagues,” Gareth remembers. “With Webex, we can control which groups they join and ensure everyone takes their fair quota of the more complex and straightforward calls.”

He explains further: “I went into the office last week, and one of the agents told me the new system seems fairer and that the calls are now being distributed more evenly. You might think this is a given, but some contact centre solutions give too much choice to agents. That might be the right approach for other organisations, but it doesn’t suit how we work. We like that Webex allows managers more control and gives more consideration to how the contact centre runs at an organisational level.”

Reliable hybrid working

Introduced during lockdown, hybrid and remote working improved efficiency and staff morale. So, Gareth and his team wanted the new contact centre solution to make the experience smoother for agents and seamless for customers. “Our data shows agents are more productive when they have the chance to work in a home environment—and we know they appreciate the flexibility, too, so it’s a win-win for us all,” Gareth explains.

He continues: “The previous system enabled hybrid working using a VPN, which generally was fine for the most part, but if the VPN dropped, it caused connectivity problems. By contrast, Webex runs straight from a browser, making everything more streamlined and consistent.”

Long-term support

As providers of post-sales support, Gareth and TMTI’s leadership team know the importance of continued care and support for customers after their initial purchase. So, they particularly appreciated Node4’s ongoing consultancy.

“A business like ours needs much more than a contact centre installation company,” he notes. “Webex offers a lot more customisation than our previous solutions. That’s great for us as each customer has different preferences and procedures that we need to accommodate. But you need a diligent, knowledgeable installation team—like the one we got with Node4—to do all the fine-tuning and make those subtle changes. We also appreciate the ongoing education they’re able to provide, which ensures we’re always getting the most from the solution.”

Looking to the future

Part of that ongoing consultation and education has focused on future strategies for implementing AI within TMTI’s contact centre. “Everyone’s opinion on AI is different,” Gareth admits. “But we’re a tech company at heart, so if we don’t get on board with it soon, we’ll miss the boat. What we don’t want to do, however, is try to replace people. I don’t think you can in a contact centre environment, but there are definitely a few areas where it could help us.”

He explains further: “We’re a medium enterprise. We employ a few developers, but we don’t have the dedicated expertise to introduce our own AI. Node4 offers this capability alongside its Webex expertise, which I’d say is pretty unique in the market. It’s definitely going to be a huge benefit to us in the future—and for organisations with a similar business model to ours.”

Improved customer service

Summing up the results of Node4’s Webex installation, Gareth reflects on the improvements to customer service he’s noticed: “We have far better insight into how the contact centre is functioning—and it’s a much more efficient operation, with team managers spending less time on time-consuming admin tasks. There’s way more agent availability, and we have far more control over agent allocation. All these factors have led to a direct and positive impact on customer service standards. And it’s not just my view— our CEO has noticed the positive impact Node4 and Webex has had on the business.”

He concludes: “Node4’s team have been brilliant. I can’t speak highly enough about how friendly everyone is—and their professionalism. There are no hard sales, and I always get a straight-up answer about whether or not one of our requests is achievable. There have been countless occasions where Node4 staff have gone above and beyond, sometimes working weekends to deliver project milestones on time—we always appreciate that and never take it for granted.”