Collections Stream at CCR-interactive

1. Hachette Distribution
HACHETTE UK
DISTRIBUTION
The Customer Service
“Experience” for Credit
Jon Swan FICM
Head of Credit Services
CCR Interactive 6th
October 2015

2. Hachette UK Overview
 Two Distribution Centres - Bookpoint (Oxon) LBS
(Sussex)
 Eight Group Publishers + two new acquisitions late 2014
 > 30 Third Party Publisher distribution contracts
 32 team members in Credit Control
 Approx 30% export business across >100 countries
 Digital business continuing to increase
 30,000 accounts (98% B2B 2% B2C)

3. Hachette leading authors
 Stephen King
 John Grisham
 JK Rowling (Robert Galbraith)
 Andy McNab
 Jodie Picqoult
 Boris Johnson
 The Hairy Bikers!
 Joe Sugg
 Martina Cole

4. So who do we sell to?

5. And also sell to…….

6. And finally to a whole range of
outlets
 The Bookpeople
 Museums and
Libraries
 Art Galleries
 Football clubs
 Sports Associations
 Stationers
 Sports shops (eg
JD)
 Railway
associations
 Oliver Bonas
 John Lewis
 International
Distributors
 Universities and
schools (globally)
 Theatres
 And, of course, our
1,000 independent
booksellers in the
UK

7. Audience question
 How important is the use of strong Customer
Service behaviour in Credit Control?
 A Very important
 B Quite important
 C Makes little difference
 D Not particularly important
 E Not important at all

8. 450+
members in
public &
private
sectors
through multi
industries
Standards.
Benchmarkin
g &
Accreditation
Training &
Development
Research and
Insight
Networking &
customer
service
events
What is the Institute of Customer
Services?
The ICS is a professional
body dedicated to the
promotion of excellence in
customer service.

9. Members

10. UK Customer
Satisfaction Index
Hachette UK
Benchmarked against UKCSI Services results –
July 2014
Institute of Customer Service

11. Word cloud
The word cloud shows which adjectives were used the most when customers described their
most recent experience with Hachette UK Services. The bigger the word the more times it
was mentioned.
UKCSI │Hachette UK

12. “Customer facing” at Hachette
 Not just customer service but all areas with an
external or internal customer touch point
I.T.
Finance
Operations
Credit Services
Customer Services

13. Benefits and planned outcomes
 Raise skill levels throughout Credit Services. Aids staff
retention, higher morale and motivation
 Improve efficiencies as we learn to communicate more
effectively both internally and externally
 Create a USP to distinguish us from our competition
 Greatly improve Customer Experience by focusing more on
the soft skills but not diminishing focus on collections
performance
 Principal challenge to enhance the “soft skills” without
compromising effective collections performance

14. So what are we doing?
 Name change - Credit SERVICES, not Control
 Telephone answering scripts
 Disconnection of the menu selection on the phones
 Disconnection of all voice mails
 Improved “out of office” replies
 Improved design of auto reply e mails
 New reporting analysing abandoned calls and
volumes by team member
 E mail signatures consistent design, even down to the
same type face, wording.
 Re-designing the “Landesk” tool (IT Helpdesk) to
manage customer issues

15. The main challenges
 Changing entrenched behaviour and attitude
 Avoiding compromising collection performance
 Attracting new employees with wider skill sets
 Messaging the need for change
 As we improve service levels expectations will
rise
 Fast reaction to issues as they develop
 Ensure our client publishers are fully engaged

16. How will we measure
success?
 Annual Client Satisfaction Questionnaire
 Credit Services set a target % performance
result
 SLA’s measured and exceptions reported
 Regular feedback from client publishers both
face to face and by telephone
 Staff satisfaction – positive improvements
 Reduced staff attrition
 Retention of key publishers and new business
won

17. Questions?