The story

Diversification includes being entrusted by our client with additional servicing functions – 24×7 critical reporting lines for fraud and lost/stolen cards, and AML back-office processing (supporting regulatory compliance with the Payment Systems Regulation).

The current team size is 30FTE, primarily split evenly between collections and 24×7 critical reporting lines. Both activities require agents with high levels of emotional intelligence successfully to manage customers in potentially vulnerable circumstances.

The longevity of relationship and diversification in scope of services has resulted from the exceptional performance and value Sigma Connected has delivered against both customer and business targets, including:

• Continuous improvement in collections performance from the unique champion/challenger and micro-strategy initiatives that have generated market-leading results for other clients
• Consultative support with end-to-end customer journey design
• Expert agent services in matters of policy and regulatory adherence for their other (e.g. written) customer communications

While all services were first implemented and delivered in our UK operation, from mid-2023, we successfully completed a strategic programme to transition all the outsourced operation and some additional in-house functions to one of our premier offshore sites in Cape Town on a phased basis.

The objective was not only to mitigate recruitment and attrition challenges we were both experiencing in the UK but also to prepare for significant scaling in line with their 5-year growth plans. The client was delighted with the smooth execution of our implementation and excellence in customer delivery.

In the last 12 months since the transition programme was completed, the client has seen a tangible reduction in operating costs of 40% with no deterioration in quality of customer service and operational performance compared to the preceding UK operation. In fact, Sigma Connected has delivered green scorecards every month against all the clients’ tier 1 performance metrics – QA, collections file penetration, agent knowledge assessments.