Innovation enabled Moneypenny to support 21,000 home-working customers.
Wrexham-based Moneypenny had to manage communications remotely during lockdown, not only for its own stakeholders but also for the 21,000 clients it looks after, both in the UK and overseas.
Moneypenny is an outsourced communications company with offices in Wrexham and Atlanta in the USA. It employs more than 1,000 staff – 850 of whom are Wales-based, with the remainder working in the USA. Between the two offices, the firm manages more than 20 million communications annually.
The tech-driven business, which handles phone calls and live chats for clients from large global brands to sole traders, was able to respond rapidly to the need for its army of personal assistants to set up at home.
Joanna Swash, group chief executive officer of Moneypenny, said:
“We had migrated our systems to the cloud in 2019, which proved to be a huge blessing, as being on the back foot is a costly business. As a team, we were also very active on Workplace from Facebook, which meant we already had a platform through which we communicated with each other on a daily basis. This space was invaluable during the early days of lockdown, acting as a virtual watercooler, where we talked business and also shared tips on cooking, home-schooling and mindfulness.
Even though virtual systems were in place, Moneypenny’s technical team worked relentlessly to equip the staff with the hardware they needed, so the service to customers was unhindered.
Joanna said:
“Within three weeks, the entire team was up and running from home and it was service as normal for our clients. We knew that the early days of lockdown were crucial in terms our clients being able to respond to their own customers. Letting them down was not an option.
“Looking back at our statistics in June 2020, call volumes increased by a third and the average length of a call increased by nearly a quarter. People want to speak to people, especially in uncertain times, and we had the responsibility of making that happen for our customers.
For the senior management team, the bigger challenge was maintaining the Moneypenny culture while the entire workforce was operating remotely.
Joanna said:
“Our culture is so important to us. We have a low staff turnover and we are very connected as a team. We didn’t want that diluted during lockdown. As well as keeping in touch on Facebook Workplace, we did things like sending out 1,000 chocolate brownies with a handwritten note to every member of staff and made sure they all had either a turkey, ham or vegan roast for Christmas. We wanted them to know how important they are to us.
Moneypenny also used the pandemic to innovate. It created a fast recovery team to establish new products and services aimed at helping clients through the pandemic. This included an online health-screening bot for businesses, a new outbound calling service for organisations with furloughed staff, and other efficiencies that enabled clients to take calls from home.
Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the pandemic hasn’t affected Moneypenny’s impressive drive for growth. It appointed 350 new staff during the last 12 months and is planning to recruit 100 more. It anticipates that hybrid working will form a part of its working policies long-term.
Joanna added:
“We are at the stage of reviewing what has worked and what hasn’t. We are in constant communication with our team because we know one size doesn’t fit all. We need to create a robust system that works across the board. Our priority is a happy workforce, as we know this leads to happy clients.
“For us, being bold has reaped rewards. We have survived, thrived and grown, and we will always make every effort to stand in our customers’ shoes.