Building the UK foundation

Sigma Connected started working with a well-known provider of broadband as well as energy and insurance products to residential customers in September 2022 with a contract to provide a 20FTE UK collections team.

The client was so impressed with the consistently excellent debt recovery and customer satisfaction rates we achieved over 2023 – largely the result of us driving attrition as low as 0% despite the well documented recruitment and retention challenges the UK contact centre industry has recorded since the Pandemic – that they awarded us additional work which saw this permanent team grow to 40FTE in 2024.

Additionally, in February 2023, when the client found it needed a partner to provide a new UK team of 15FTE to assist its in-house customer service operation through a period of increased customer demand, it awarded Sigma Connected the work without hesitation. This service was always intended to operate for a fixed period and closed when the client was able to resume full internal operations in April 2024.

And in early 2024, the client asked us to provide a further 15FTE to include the provision of Customer Engagement Visit (CEV) support for warrant activities.

This story of success was testament to the calibre and skill of the operational management team we deployed, the highly collaborative and genuinely partnership-based approach to service delivery that we both adopted, and Sigma Connected’s overarching people proposition – all were key contributing factors in driving the levels of productivity and performance the client enjoyed.

Growing in South Africa through proven results

At the end of 2024, the client initiated a strategic programme to outsource the bulk of its 250FTE UK based customer operations to Cape Town. The scope of this encompassed energy customer service and collections work performed in-house as well as Sigma Connected’s UK outsourced service.

Following a genuinely competitive tendering process, it awarded the contract to Sigma Connected, with implementation to commence in early 2025.

Transition began with collections work, with a 20FTE control group mobilised in early 2025 to enable the assessment and optimisation of training materials and delivery for a South African team as well as to evaluate offshore vs UK performance before rolling out and ramping of the operation.

This control group proved early that performance could match that of a UK team, resulting in additional groups of 20FTE going live in May and July 2025.

Partnership in action

Phased implementation of additional work packages are in progress and scheduled to continue across 2025. We agreed a deliberately phased approach would be best to implement in order to set up Sigma Connected offshore teams for success from day one, building high knowledge and competency operational leadership layers through our structured talent development programme. The plan and actual activities were co-created in full consultation with the client and implementation achieved to mutual satisfaction thanks to their subject matter experts being fully engaged and supportive throughout.