Virgin Media, a long standing client of 7 years, asked us to hire 500 front line customer service staff across their 4 major contact centre locations. One of the issues they faced is that due to Covid-19, and the closure of overseas customer contact centres, they needed to quickly increase their UK headcount. 

After a fast, 8 day, set up period, we have been live for just 2 weeks and in that time we have:

  • Redesigned a virtual interview process from scratch 
  • Generated 4,200 new apps
  • Conducted over 1000 video interviews via @Affinix which is an AI enabled talent acquisition technology that gives a consumer-like candidate experience 
  • Carried out nearly 150 final stage qualification calls
  • Created a hiring manager audit step with 95% of our decisions agreement building a new level of trust across the business
  • We have 107 candidates at offer step – we only conducted our first VIV 10 working days ago !!!!!

We have enough video interviews to manage 1600 next week as we focus on driving more candidates to complete this vital stage.

Virgin Media are now in the process of equipping people to work from home. This is obviously a huge task as they have thousands of people who do not have laptops but it is happening and is allowing them to keep their UK operations running as well as increasing their capacity. It's not without it's logistical challenges as new staff need to go in to collect equipment as well as attend essential in person training but with more and more existing staff home working they are able to put social distancing in place onsite. As soon as the newer staff have their basic training they can then start working from home before receiving more training in a virtual environment.

"We are incredibly proud of this achievement. My advice to other organisations getting to grips with volume, virtual recruitment is to work in an agile way with a strong project team, get early buy in from senior stakeholders and really understand the issue you are trying to overcome. Anything is possible and it is amazing what can be achieved when faced with extreme situations which have a direct impact on a business and its customers."

James Chorley, Virgin Media’s Client Relationship Director, PeopleScout

The core roles in this recruitment sprint are:

  • Retentions Advisor – Speaking with customers who want to leave and persuading them to stay. 
  • Collections Advisor – Speaking with customers who may be having issues paying their bills or setting up new direct debits.
  • Customer care – Front line queries, dealing with things like faults, upgrades for all types of customers, broadband, TV, phone and mobile.

These roles are split over four locations: Teesside, Sheffield, Manchester and Birmingham.