Hewden
“ROCKETUK.COM are very easy to work with and Hewden has an excellent relationship with the team. Its Rocket Ansa-Call service adds considerable value to us, providing our customers with 24/7 access to Hewden. It also keeps our costs down through not having to engage shift workers in our own contact centre.”
Head of Technical Services at Hewden, Alan Huddart
If a mile stretch of the M25 motorway needs to be closed for a night to carry out vital road repairs, time is of the essence. The contractor responsible for conducting the work needs to be sure that the equipment hired to do the job is reliable and should a problem arise or a new machine is needed it can be dealt with as quickly as possible.
Hewden is the UK's largest and most diverse specialist equipment rental company. Part of Finning International Inc, Hewden provides equipment rental and contract management services to key businesses in virtually every sector of British industry such as roads, rail, airports and factories. Its product portfolio includes power generators, earthmovers, cranes & heaving lifting equipment and dumpers.
All of the equipment hired from Hewden has a customer service telephone number clearly displayed on it, that when dialled, is routed directly to its contact centre in Manchester, open between 8.00am and 5.30pm. However, construction and maintenance projects such as rail and roadworks are increasingly being undertaken at night to minimise disruption to commuters. If a customer is working on a project and has a problem with a piece of equipment at 2.00am they cannot wait until the contact centre re-opens.
Initially, Hewden’s engineers and senior managers were taking out of hours calls on a rota basis, but a more efficient and formal approach was required to ensure every call would be swiftly answered and managed to a consistently high standard around the clock.
Meeting Customer Service Demands 24/7
“During the night we do not experience high call volumes, perhaps two or three calls during a typical weekday nightshift. Yet, the implications of not answering these calls in a timely manner can have major repercussions on the completion of a project,” explains the General Manager of Product & Pricing at Hewden, Alan Huddart. “Our job is to ensure that Hewden customers have access to the right equipment when they need it. The problem was that due to the low number of calls we receive, it really wasn’t cost efficient to man our contact centre 24/7.”
Hewden recognised the cost benefits of outsourcing and selected the Rocket Ansa-Call service from ROCKETUK.COM, a 75-seat contact centre operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from Aldershot, Hampshire. Huddart explains how Rocket Ansa-Call works alongside Hewden’s own contact centre, “When our office closes at 5.30pm Rocket Ansa-Call immediately takes over responsibility of incoming customer service calls. It does this throughout the night until our contact centre re-opens at 8am the following day.”
Huddart describes a typical call the Rocket Ansa-Call will manage, “All of our equipment has a free-phone number clearly displayed on it. So, if an excavator for example suffers a mechanical fault the machine operator can call us directly. The agent will take the post-code or location of the caller and quickly escalate the call to the appropriate Hewden personnel located nearest the site to take action.” However Rocket Ansa-Call agents are also able to resolve many calls directly as Huddart continues, “Should the call regard a puncture to a hired Hewden vehicle or broken/cracked windscreen they are able to immediately dispatch one of our registered suppliers to carry out the work onsite.”
To maintain consistency and quality-of-service to Hewden customers and continuity during transition from night shift to day shift, Rocket Ansa-Call provides Hewden with a daily e-mail report that details of all the calls handled and the course of action taken for each.
Huddart concludes, “ROCKETUK.COM are very easy to work with and Hewden has an excellent relationship with the team. Its Rocket Ansa-Call service adds considerable value to us, providing our customers with 24/7 access to Hewden. It also keeps our costs down through not having to engage shift workers in our own contact centre.”
