Coffee with Gareth Murphy, Head of Customer Experience at Sapphire Contracting

Gareth, tell us a little bit about you?

Hello, I’m Gareth Murphy, Head of Customer Experience at Sapphire. Having worked in the customer service sphere for 25 years for some of the biggest global brands I came to Sapphire in April 2022 looking for a whole new challenge. I have worked within my role for the last 8 months, spending the initial 6-month period as a consultant understanding the task at hand and how I can help Sapphire elevate their position to become the best service provider in the contracting industry.

What is Customer Experience?

Simply put Customer Experience is the feeling generated within a customer base when a service provider deals with and services its customers. It sounds simple but there is much more to it when delivering a service in today’s ever-changing landscape. You need to cultivate a feeling of belonging, that our customers are not just another number, that’s why I look at our service offering through a variety of lenses and focus areas.

Why is this important?

Creating a customer experience that puts our customers in the hands of our experts, embraces the digital age and listens to the voice of the customer is essential in becoming the best of breed in our industry.

Doing that while handling the sensitive business of managing customer’s income can be a challenge but listening to our customers and delivering on our promises is built into our ethos. Finding the balance between empathy, rapport, process adherence and technology doesn’t happen overnight but with constant evolution comes sustainable improvement.

Tell us about the customer voice?

This is the important bit. If you want to truly improve you must ask your existing customers what improvement looks like for them and spend a day walking in their shoes. Far too often ideas are generated with little or no customer engagement. Surveying our customers at regular touch points, listening to calls, analysing complaints and having honest discussions with our customer facing team are key to generating the ideas that will inform improvements.

What are your team tactics?

Having the right people working towards a common goal is tantamount to our success. At Sapphire we have a recruitment policy that enables us to find the best candidates for our roles however we insist on finding the right person for Sapphire and ensure that Sapphire is the right fit for the individual. We also believe that organic growth and promoting from within drive the right behaviours and outputs that complement our mission to become the best customer experience provider in the UK contracting world.

Any exciting tools for the job?

Having a fantastic team is a real benefit, however, having the right tools to deliver amazing experiences is vital.

Using Allego technology we are able to promote a culture of Service Quality using a consistent scoring mechanism to rank calls and customer interactions. This in turn allows us to deliver feedback in the moment and give our people access to a variety of call analytics and ideas for improvement.

Creating and developing a ZOHO CRM system to deliver bespoke and value-based customer journeys have also seen our processes greatly improve, adding value to the customer journey whilst reducing the cost and allowing us to invest in other areas of pro-active servicing.

Having a WhatsApp contact platform is game-changing. As tech expediates traditionally people have moved from phone and email to live chat. We have gone one step further servicing more than 400 customers per week via WhatsApp chat ensuring we can serve the customer when they need it from their very fingertips.

Do you have any measures for success?

We pride ourselves on delivering a great service – We have basic standards, like answering 80% of all our calls within 15 seconds, all emails received during business hours are answered the same day and that no call back gets left longer than one hour. However, this is just standard service. We measure every aspect of our customer journey using various tools. Quality scores, productivity metrics, NPS surveys and customer satisfaction surveys are just a small part of the measures we review daily to find the slight edge.

These measures have played a significant part in us being nominated for Best Large Umbrella Company 2023 via the Contracting Awards and securing us the number 1 UK accountancy company to work for and a place in the top 25 small companies in the UK via the Best Companies body. The jewel in the crown is our 5-Star presence on Trustpilot and Google.  Here you will find that our customer testimonies speak for themselves and bring some reality to our high standards.

What’s your best piece of customer experience advice?

Don’t stand still in front of the mirror thinking everything is looking pretty. You must keep on moving, finding opportunities, taking ideas, and transforming them into amazing realisations. The danger is, those who stand behind you can quickly see your reflection and if you spend too long looking pretty, they will overtake you before you have had the chance to notice.

Gareth Murphy | Head of Customer Experience

01625 539997 | LinkedIn