Only by keeping customers happy is it possible to have a successful business. As part of an organisation that is more than 120 years old, we believe we can talk with authority on the subject.

As such there is no surprise that we have a Customer Service Team whose key role is to help customers with their queries, enabling them to understand more about the complexities of waste management.

People are the key to building and maintaining a successful Customer Services Team, whether it’s the manager who does the recruiting and setting standards or the individual team members who speak directly with our customers and deal with their enquiries.

At Hills, we work hard to recruit the right people, and we look for many different characteristics. An important one is a fit with our culture, which has a fun and energetic feel to it. Team dynamics and a willingness to help each other are so important because each team member will have different strengths and weaknesses allowing each team member to help and cross-skill each other.  We also encourage our team to problem solve for our customers, often probing the customer for information that will allow them to provide the best solution for a customer's particular set of circumstances. 

Our team are encouraged to identify new ideas and improvements to the way we do things, all with the aim of providing a better customer experience. We do of course encourage our team to switch off occasionally, and, with the team bonds being so strong, they have regular team nights out too!

Teamwork needs to be strong in other ways too, with strong relationships made across the business with other key departments, notably our operations team. This is key, because the customer support team need to be able to get answers or actions undertaken quickly to resolve customer enquiries. 

In this way their knowledge of how the business operates builds quickly and helps customers understand the complexities of the operational aspects of getting their business waste collected efficiently. 

And because we are in direct contact with customers each day, being a good listener, and having the ability to build a relationship with the customers we speak to, is really important to us. The rapport, tone of voice and warmth we build is so good that we have some of our customers ask for team members by name in order to handle their enquiry. It’s important for the customer because the named staff member will know their business better than others in the team. We believe our customers also enjoy this experience as they get to know us a little as well. This was particularly noticeable during covid lockdown when the need to talk to people was so strong. By having our contact centre based locally in the region we operate we also find it helps us to understand the local challenges our customers are facing.

We are of course careful not to keep the customers on the phone too long by retaining control of the call to ensure we manage enquiries professionally.

Over the years we have adapted to the demands of our customers, who are now more knowledgeable and have higher expectations - with the development of technology we have been able to support customer needs more effectively, provide more information and be able to get any documentation to customers faster than ever before.

Clearly, not everything goes right all of the time, so our Team really earn their keep when we have to handle complaints. Our team are trained to listen and take the heat out of the situation, in order to help resolution. Importantly our team are empowered to deal with these situations in the best way they see fit, whether this is to seek to resolve the issue themselves or to choose to involve senior management.

All these skills are complemented by our more specific in-house Peak Training programme providing specifically tailored training to each employee, based on both their in-roll needs and their longer-term career development.

Additional training is provided by using third-party experts to aid in improving call handling, managing difficult situations and hints and tips to make call handling more effective. We also listen to calls to give further coaching advice.

Some members of our team are also keen to contribute beyond the requirements of their role and will get involved in other company-wide activities, and one person even helps to run the charity committee.

We’d like to think all our efforts in recruitment selection, training, the development of skills and capabilities, make for happy staff, which leads to happy customers.