Contact Centre Overview
Screwfix’s fast paced, busy, and forward thinking Contact Centre employs over 400 people, handles around 40,000 calls and thousands of email and postal enquiries every week. We offer a high quality of service to customers of our catalogue and website alike, dealing expertly with enquiries from both trade and DIY consumers. We take orders, process payments, respond to enquiries, and offer advice and product support across our entire range of 18,000 lines.
The Screwfix Contact Centre puts great emphasis on creating a great place to work for our people, from providing a stimulating physical environment through to charity fun days and team strengthening events, daily briefings, regular feedback sessions and forums to create a sense of community; the positive results of which are revealed through our regular employee engagement surveys, low attrition figures and high customer satisfaction results. Training and development are also key to our success here in the Contact Centre – our individual development programmes ensure that all colleagues are fully supported in their role from the outset and continue to be stretched and developed throughout their career. All of these initiatives contribute to this being a great place to work.
The majority of our people are split into teams of around 10 Customer Service Representatives, with each team being led and guided by a well trained and experienced Team Manager. Some teams field calls from across our customer base, while others are specially trained to deal with orders and enquiries for specific catalogues, customer types or product ranges. To support some of our most important trade customers, we have created dedicated teams for our Plumbfix and Electricfix brands, for next day delivery, orders despatched directly to the customer from our suppliers, and for high spending key accounts. This mixture of resources ensures that all our customers are given the very best service standards.
The Contact Centre Service
Our Contact Centre currently takes inbound calls only, but is moving towards a more rounded service model where we will also make proactive outbound service calls to welcome new customers, to ensure that existing customers are happy with the service they are receiving, and to inform customers of exciting new promotions and offers. This variety and mixture of work means that there is never a dull moment and that no two calls are the same – our agents learn to expect the unexpected. One moment you might be taking an order for a power drill from a keen DIY enthusiast, the next you could be fielding an enquiry from the head of procurement at a major hotel chain about using us for all his maintenance and repair products – it really is that varied!
Our teams of Customer Service Representatives are ably supported by small teams of specialist staff who are responsible for providing a range of services that allow the Contact Centre to operate at the top of its game. The Resource Management, Forecasting and MIS (Management Information Systems) team focus on ensuring that we always have the right people in the right place at the right time, creating shifts and rotas that allow us to put enough people on the phones to deal with anticipated call volumes, and have people with the right skill sets in the right jobs. It’s a complex process that involves balancing the needs of the business with providing a decent work-life balance to our teams, developing working patterns that suit the lifestyles of the people that work here.
This team works out how many people we are likely to need on the phones at any given time by projecting likely call volumes, working closely with our marketing department to coordinate our activity with catalogue launches and current promotions. They also produce the statistics and data that support and inform the decisions that our managers take on a daily basis, allowing us to base our planning on solid facts. We also have dedicated training and communications teams in the Contact Centre, enabling us to continue to develop and get the very best out of our people at all times.
In short, our Contact Centre is a vibrant and exciting place to work and a great environment in which to utilise our excellent training programme to develop a long-term and rewarding career in a fast-moving and dynamic industry.
