ICON Communication Centres s.r.o. (ICON) received a 2019 ABSL (Association of Business Service Leaders) Czech Republic Diamond Award for ‘Customer Initiative’ at a gala awards ceremony in Brno.

This category focused on rewarding a services sector business that had produced an innovative initiative to significantly improve customer satisfaction and deliver superior services. The ABSL Czech Republic recognized the technology transformation ICON made to the customer care processes of its client, a leading provider of payment services to a global network of car park operators.

ICON provides a 24/7 365 multilingual customer care solution that assists car park users struggling to use the client’s automated payment system. The award-winning outsourcing solution devised and deployed by ICON, unified disparate systems under a suite of new technologies that streamlined the management of incoming customer inquiries across thousands of parking sites worldwide. To demonstrate the significant improvement to the ABSL Czech Republic judging panel, ICON presented key metrics that resulted from its initiative –

• the cost per customer service interaction was reduced to less than 25% of the cost prior to the solution implementation
• the average handle time (AHT) of incoming customer calls was reduced from 3-4 minutes to less than 1 minute
• email response times were reduced from 1-2 days down to 4-5 business hours

“This BPO solution was driven entirely by ICON’s Operations and Customer Success teams. They identified how technology integrated with talented colleagues could provide a vastly improved customer experience for our client, and they had the expertise to implement it whilst maintaining costs. This initiative demonstrates the added consultative value ICON brings to every client relationship by actively seeking opportunities for business transformation to maximise client return on investment (ROI).”
Helen Hickin – CEO – ICON Communication Centres

The client’s fixed budget meant that ICON absorbed the entire cost of the technology outlay. Highly accurate forecasting ensured confidence in the solution outcome, which ultimately resulted in the client being able to achieve more within their budget whilst vastly improving their customer experience. ICON moved its client from an unstructured system and a lack of business intelligence to having 100% visibility across all customer care costs and location costs. The big data now available significantly improves the client’s ability to confidently scale their business. ICON’s entire customer care transformation took just weeks from conception to delivery.

“This project brings a whole new life to the phrase – ‘going the extra mile for the client.’ In this case, the client was a successful global parking operator struggling to scale their operations. ICON recognised the client challenge and took a significant gamble to devote their time and resources to explore and solve the multiple issues holding back their clients growth. By deploying their own customer service and IT teams on the client, ICON were able to implement an end-to-end transformation of the client systems, combined with innovative new digital tools. All of this was achieved without ‘ the client lifting a finger’!”
John Appleton – Managing Director – ABSL Czech Republic

The Association of Business Service Leaders in the Czech Republic (ABSL) is the leading member organization representing the business services sector in the Czech Republic. Its members include companies that conduct business in the area of Shared Services Centre (SSC), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), Research and Development (R&D) and companies contributing to the sector’s growth.