HR Case Study: BASF Coatings Ltd
CASE STUDY: BASF Coatings LtdBASF Coatings Ltd is part of the multinational chemical company BASF. Globally BASF has over 95,000 employees, business partners in over 200 countries and more than 150 production sites. The coatings division, BASF Coatings Ltd, manufactures Industrial and Automotive coatings and employs 180 people across three business units.
Due to the resources available to a global company, outsourcing is not something that they frequently need to consider. However, approximately six months ago BASF Coatings came across a service called Outsourced Reception, provided by Moneypenny, which appeared to offer real benefits. Outsourced reception lets larger businesses outsource all or part of their reception function – the company provides a dedicated reception or team of receptionists who can support or replace on-site receptionists. Moneypenny’s managing director, Andy Dodwell, explains further, “Having a professional and efficient call handling system is absolutely business critical. Every missed call is a potential business opportunity and no one will dispute that when we ring a business, the impression we get from the person that answers the phone is absolutely critical.” As is often the case in manufacturing companies, at BASF Coatings, there is now no dedicated receptionist and historically calls were answered by employees in Sales or Customer Support. These employees also had other responsibilities apart from answering the phone. To try and improve on the way in which calls were handled, BASF Coatings decided to outsource their reception function to Moneypenny. Calls to the general switchboard number go straight to Moneypenny who have information on each employee’s preferred method for handling the call. They might want Moneypenny to patch the call to a mobile or other number, take a message and email or SMS it over, or, depending on the nature of the call – forward it on to another employee. In addition whole departments can choose to divert their calls for specified periods of time if, for example, they’re in a team meeting or otherwise engaged.
Ingrid Newton is the HR Manager with sole responsibility for HR related matters, and as the only HR professional managing three business units, she has a demanding work load. Explaining the benefits of outsourcing the reception Ingrid said, “Moneypenny allows our employees to concentrate on their core activities rather than answering general switchboard calls. We can rely on them to screen calls and know that anything important will be directed to us. We have confidence that all calls will be handled professionally.
“A major plus is that Moneypenny weed out any sales calls and I think it’s hugely underestimated how much time these kind of calls can take up. We have a strict policy to only accept sales approaches in writing because otherwise you could spend all day dealing with unwanted calls. For example I receive a great many sales calls from recruitment agencies but Moneypenny filter them out and ensure that we are free to concentrate on what is important.”
Moneypenny has developed a highly advanced contact management system which helps the receptionists provide the most efficient service possible. No matter how many employees there are in a company, the receptionist can see the diary of the person being called, the details of each employee plus notes about the individual’s preferred call handling method. The system also recognises different numbers and will flash up an alert accordingly, which means that Moneypenny can answer the phone in different ways for different numbers. The Moneypenny receptionist answers the phone with a different greeting.
Typically outsourcing is also motivated by financial considerations and it’s certainly cheaper to outsource all or some of the reception function than to employ a dedicated in-house receptionist. Ingrid Newton is convinced that outsourcing their reception has been a positive move, “For HR, it’s just one less issue to think about. The employees are pleased that they are not being constantly interrupted and can get on with their main function. Moneypenny really work as an extension of our business and answer the phone as if based in our offices, at times you can forget that we’ve outsourced anything!”
Created on: 03-Sep-08 15:39
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