Inside Towergate's new Manchester call centre

It must have been a welcome change for Mark Hodges to officially open Towergate’s flagship SME contact centre.

For months the news has focused on job cuts, worsening financial results and staff departures. But throughout the turmoil Hodges has been insistent that Towergate is on a transformational journey.

Cutting the red ribbon at its new Manchester SME call centre, Hodges was finally able to show exactly what he has in mind.

Some 200,000 customers who between them place £150m of premiums will be served by the centre when the systems are up and running.

It’s a big shift. But Hodges is convinced Towergate’s going about it in the right way.

And if anything Towergate actually erred on the side of caution when deciding which clients would move. “We went into every office and sat down with the local team and went through the client list. Where somebody said they needed to stay, they’ve stayed. And where they were unattached we’ve moved them,” he says.

The alternative would have been to let branches pick and choose which clients to send their way. “For me complete optionality means you don’t know how big to build it, how fast to build it, and how much to invest in it. You’re building on sand. Whereas we knew that we had a core of business policies that we could move over and therefore we could build with confidence,” Hodges says.

By the end of the year, migration completed, around a third of its SME customers which spend under £5,000 on insurance will served by the office.

A big difference they’ll see is that it will be open from 8am until 8pm and at weekends. Phones will be answered by staff who have gone through a six week training programme encorporating technical and sales skills.

Towergate’s management are confident this is what those customers want.

It surveyed some, who said they wanted phones answered quickly by a knowledgeable person who could help them find reasonably priced insurance.

“It wasn’t important that they got through to a particular location or a particular person. They just wanted it answered, with service, with a decent price,” says Neil Galjaard, chief executive of the Manchester office.

And a trial of 50,000 policy renewals running the system in Milton Keynes found a swing from net business loss of -3.8% to a net win of 2.7%.  

Now the internal battle for hearts and minds is on. Towergate is arranging for leaders from its 24 regions to visit the centre before Christmas.

“I hope when our regional offices have been up here and had a look that they’ll be very proud of it and actually sell as part of the business if they meet someone and it’s not quite right to have a fully advised account executive process,” Hodges adds.

Hodges stresses that the centre will not operate as an island, and the flow of business runs both ways. For example, it plans to recommend that customers transfer from Manchester to a face-to-face broker relationship in one of its branches if they reach a certain level of complexity.

Meanwhile those branches will be free to spend more time giving advice to larger clients.

If you build it, they will come

Hodges is energised by the place and likens the excitement of building it to the thrills of doing a deal.

“The thing that I love about it is the modernity,” he says. “When you imagine some of these places - and I’ve certainly seen them in the past - they lack colour, they lack personality and they’re quite old fashioned. This feels vibrant and it will really appeal to the kind of people we’re attracting. We want it to be a great place to work.”

Much love and attention has clearly been furnished on the design of the office in Manchester’s Spinningsfield district.

Visitors were shown comfy break out areas with noise absorbent seats, several no-door offices for team huddles (apparently meetings take twice as long if you shut a door) and barista style coffee machines. The whole office will be paperless, with documents scanned off site.

The offices are all there to entice the best staff away from rival financial services firms in the city. Towergate has already recruited 127 and will build up to 400.

Hodges describes personality type Towergate wants to recruit as: “Hugely customer focused, empathetic, great listening skills, great energy and somebody who would want to enjoy what they do.”

Insurer commissions

Aviva’s former UK chief executive says that having all that business in one place has been “broadly welcomed” by insurers.

“From an insurer perspective, it’s hard to get to this business if it’s scattered over 100 offices,” he says.

“When it’s here, if they want to complete for that business we can facilitate that. If they don’t, they don’t have to. I think they’re broadly very positive and see it as great access for their products to our customers.”

So will it be asking them for more commissions to reflect this?

Hodges smiles and hesitates before answering: “We always think we do very fair, reasonable and commercial deals with our insurance partners.

“At the end of the day we’re investing in this for our customers with longer opening hours, a growing business with all the training and things that they want. From their perspective it is an opportunity to grow if they want to be a part of it.”

Others will be watching closely, and not just for a hopeful sniff of schadenfreude.

Hodges says: “Three competitors spoke to me at Biba and the quiet conversation was we hope this works for you, and for the business - and it’s something we would look to copy.”