Knowledge Spotlight: Holly Harrison
At Blume, we’re proud of the wealth of experience and specialist knowledge that our colleagues bring. Over the next few months we’ll be shining a spotlight on some of our in-house specialist areas and the value they bring for our clients.
Join us as we catch up with our Quality Assurance Manager, Holly Harrison who this week celebrates her 3-year anniversary with Blume.
What was your route of progression with Blume?
I kicked off my career with Blume in the Contact Centre in a Customer Care Expert position, working on personal injury and medical negligence cases which came into the business.
In January 2022, I was promoted to an Assistant Team Leader role, before quickly stepping up again to Team Leader in April 2022. It was in these positions where I really learned a lot of the management skills which I still use today.
In October 2022, I was offered the opportunity to become the Quality Assurance Manager across the Blume group and jumped at the chance!
Being an agent myself at one point, I feel as though I have ‘inside knowledge’ and a great insight into our calls and understand how our process and structure works, which aids me in communicating with my team on how to improve quality assurance (QA) for the wider business.
What is it that the in-house quality assurance department does and what is your role within the team?
It’s our job to ensure our Customer Care Experts are compliant with every one of their calls. We need to make sure that every customer that calls us here at Blume is treated fairly and experience an excellent level of customer service in what can potentially be a very difficult time for them.
My role began by reviewing the recordings of calls and ensuring high quality, but as the Quality Assurance team has grown, so has my role, and I now oversee and support the QA team for our Blume, Online Legal (OL) and Patient Claim Line (PCL) brands ensuring consistency across the board.
How big is the quality assurance team and how do your day-to-day activities look?
I’m proud to say the team is growing rapidly along with the company!
We now have four Quality Assurance Assessors in the team: Audrey, Alice, Satine and the recently promoted Amelia, who are all invaluable at ensuring we mark calls across all our brands to a high standard.
Why is it important to have an in-house quality assurance team / What does having an in-house quality assurance department add to Blume?
One of my favourite parts of working in-house is the ability to foster such a close relationship with our Customer Care Experts.
Giving feedback is such a huge part of my role, so making sure that this is be done face to face means we can be honest with each other and have an ‘open door policy’ about any areas for improvement, ensuring we’re delivering a top service to our customers.
It also means that as the team grows and a new role becomes available, we can hire internally to provide new opportunities to some of our hardest working and knowledgeable colleagues who already know how our business operates.
Alice, Amelia and Satine all began as Customer Care Experts and I’m proud to see them follow a similar path to my own!
How do you collaborate with other departments, such as the contact centre to ensure all our work is to a high quality?
My day to day involves communicating A LOT with all three businesses and the wider management team, working closest with our in-house compliance team to ensure any changes in FCA /SRA guidelines are implemented smoothly across our contact centres.
I’m passionate about supporting my team to function to the best of their ability, and regularly liaise with Learning and Development to assist with any training which can help improve the quality of calls and evolve and grow our department.
I also work very closely with our Contact Centre Manager, Emily West and Contact Centre Operations Manager, Mark Fearnley, to regularly update them on any issues and successes, making sure that those who go above and beyond are recognised for their great work.
Can you give us a real-world example of your team having a positive impact?
I think it would be hard to choose just one as there have been so many positive changes in Quality Assurance during my time on the team.
One moment I’m really proud of is launching our Quality Assurance platform, Evaluagent in August 2023 which has lead to us seeing big improvements to our attrition and we now have great results around long serving employees remaining with the business for years which is unusual for a contact centre!
Our pass rate for calls is also exceptionally high, at almost 100% (98.3%) which is something I’m always eager to share with people.
