‘The team is very proactive. They let our customers know what’s available to help them with their business’

Three Ireland’s award winning customer care team in Limerick is a key success factor for the business, according to Brenda Jones, head of business service for the Republic of Ireland and the UK. “We make sure our business customers find it easy to get through to us with no long waits,” Jones says.

“Since the cost of living crisis became an issue affecting businesses as well as consumers, they want us to play our part. They don’t want to tie up scarce resources dealing with communications or other technology issues. The need for very good customer service is becoming more vital, not just nice to have. We recognise that our customers are busy people, and we are there for them when they need us.”

The service goes beyond responding to queries. “The team is very proactive. They let our customers know what’s available to help them with their business. It could be a new plan which reduces costs for them, or it could be a service which can add value for their business,” Jones says.

Another key aspect of the service offering is the industry accreditations in IoT and ICT earned by technical support staff. “The CCNA and CCNP are Cisco accreditations,” says Jones. “Having them means our people understand our customers’ issues better and speeds up time to resolution. It makes the whole process much faster. Our staff sign up for the courses to get the accreditations. There is great curiosity for knowledge in the team. That’s very important considering the ever-evolving nature of technology.”

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The depth of experience in the Limerick centre is also important. “We have had the team in Limerick for 25 years now,” Jones says. “That fosters great knowledge sharing. We also get referrals from staff who recommend their friends and family members to come to work for us. The tenure of our staff is very important. The longer people stay, the more knowledge they accumulate. If you have high turnover, you are constantly training new people. That’s not the case here.”

She attributes that high retention rate to the culture within the organisation. “We hear about that all the time. We really do look after our staff, and they look after each other. There is also a lot of movement internally. If people want to move around to different roles, we encourage and support them in that ambition,” Jones says. “The evolution of our products generates opportunities to stay with [the] company in new roles.”

The team’s quality of service has been recognised by winning the Best Customer Experience three years in a row and the Best Customer Shared Services Contact Centre of the Year for 2023 at the Irish Customer Contact Management Awards.

“Our speed of answering is probably the fastest in the telco market at the moment,” Jones says. “We don’t get complaints about problems getting through or speed of response. You don’t win the Best Customer Experience Award three years in a row without knowledge, expertise, speed of answering and speed of resolution. Our dedicated technical team supports customers with IoT or ICT issues and resolves them. They know the right questions to ask to get to a speedy resolution. Speed is everything. If a customer calls, it means something is not working properly. They need it fixed as quickly as possible and we pride ourselves on being able to do that.”

The team also received a right first time score for customer query responses of 85 per cent in independent research carried out be Behaviour & Attitudes. “That goes back to the knowledge in our team and the constant training and support we deliver to help staff give the customers the support they need. We are constantly receiving feedback from staff and customers to identify any obstacles they face, and we work to eliminate them. That’s how we achieve such high scores.”

Three Business is also the number one operator from the latest CX360 scores and has been number one for net promoter score (NPS) for the past eight quarters in a row based on telco customer research carried out by Behaviour & Attitudes. The company is also the least complained about telco organisation according to ComReg.

“Our aim is to make it easier to do business with us by making it easier for our staff to serve our customers,” Jones says. “We engage in continuous improvement projects all year round. We look at anything that adds value to our customers and adds to the knowledge of our team. From a service point of view, we are constantly looking at how to ensure we remain the best in the market. Our very high rate of customer retention tells us that what we’re doing is right. Customers don’t leave if they’re happy.”