The Stoke Centre of Excellence has already made a big impact to both Vodafone and the local area, but this is just the beginning explains Jon Shaw, Commercial Operations Director, Vodafone UK.
The Etruria suburb of Stoke-on-Trent has a rich history. Named after the artistic Italian district of the same name, Josiah Wedgwood opened works for his pottery empire on the site in 1769.
Just a few years later, his son Thomas became the first person to successfully use light-sensitive chemicals to capture silhouette images on paper – arguably inventing photography.
Today, Etruria is home to Vodafone UK’s Stoke Centre of Excellence. Which, in turn, is home to a team of approximately 700 employees, who manage sales and various customer services for both Vodafone’s UK consumer and business channels.
At the centre of it all
The first thing you notice when entering the centre itself is its size. Sitting under a large aircraft-hanger style roof are two bright and colourful halls. Open-plan desks are separated by breakout areas containing sofas, which sit alongside a jungle of plants.
But this isn’t style over substance. The centre has a dedicated multi-faith prayer room and a baby-feeding suite. When teams need to destress, there’s the occasional ping-pong or snooker table and other wellbeing areas.
The teams can road-test new devices as well as experience, first-hand, customer processes in a fully-functioning ‘mock’ retail store. Around the halls also sit branded display pods, used by device manufacturers who regularly visit the site to demo their products and services.
Elsewhere, there’s a dedicated Operations Centre, which monitors both backroom and customer service systems to help spot and resolve issues as soon as possible.
Ultimately, with everything geared towards a better customer experience, it’s a site that reflects our key belief that these customers are the most important thing to Vodafone.
A customer-first approach
One area that we have developed extensively in Stoke is the support Vodafone provides for its business customers. The team has grown to match customer demand, and the additional multi-product training we now provide has led to increased first call resolution for our business customers.
Alongside this, the creation of an incredible multipurpose space with one of our partners means we can host customers in person, while enabling hands-on demonstrations to ensure teams always remain up to date with the latest products.
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And practice appears to make perfect, as the dozens of trophies in our reception area suggest. But besides creating an environment for our teams to thrive and succeed in, our other main objective is making life simpler for customers.
This has resulted in several changes across the centre to ensure customers are put at the forefront of decision making, such as becoming more accessible for our consumer customers by extending opening times until 10pm on weeknights.
Meanwhile, a dedicated 100-strong specialist care team is now in place to support calls and enquiries from vulnerable customers or customers experiencing life events, such as bereavement, sudden financial difficulty and fraud.
These changes are already making a positive difference, with the average time for answering a customer call reduced from more than two minutes to just 11 seconds, while transfer rates between teams have reduced from 30%+ to less than 12%.
Leaving a legacy
That doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels, however, despite making some massive steps in Stoke, which I’m extremely pleased about. For instance, our deep detractor rates are at record lows and have already fallen by 40% year on year.
We still feel there is more we can do, and will not stop until every customer receives the best service we can offer in every interaction they have with Vodafone. We will be relentless in this goal, and this is where the team will continue to focus its attention.
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What’s more, the continued development at the centre has meant Vodafone is now Stoke’s second largest employer and, with approximately 40 new roles recently appointed and more new roles still planned, the site will continue to expand over the next few months.
In addition to its fantastic facilities, the team in Stoke is also hoping that wider employee benefits – such as generous shares, pension and retail discount schemes, as well as charitable, self-development and family support days – will tempt new individuals to join.
There’s also the kudos of working for a company that started behind a curry house in West Berkshire, but then went on to make the UK’s first mobile phone call, send the first text message, and carry the first 5G traffic across its network.
Etruria in Stoke has always been a trailblazer, but then, so has Vodafone. And although it’s been a long journey from pottery to phones, trailblazing is a legacy that Vodafone UK’s Stoke Centre of Excellence hopes to continue.
To find out more about the roles available at the Stoke Centre of Excellence, visit: www.vodafone.co.uk/careers
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