Case Study

Located in 160 85 Workshops throughout the UK, BT Fleet provides vehicles, maintenance and financial solutions to assist organisations in providing cars and vans for their employees fleet management and maintenance solutions to a range of companies to whom their vehicles are 'mission critical'. The company currently supplies, manages and maintains in excess of 50,000 vehicles to its customers.

BT Fleet employees over 700 staff people providing a range of fleet management and maintenance services to its customers. Customers include operational fleet managers and their fleet drivers. BT Fleet also offers a Retail service to members of the public who visit any one of their 85 garages for vehicle servicing and repairs.

The Need for Customer Service

BT Fleet has a large number of direct and indirect internal and external customers - level of excellent customer service is paramount for the company as the renewal and maintenance of contracts is fundamental to the ongoing success of the business. The company has also recognised that excellent customer service leads to new contracts - in such a highly competitive market a lot depends on repeat business customer service is the diff e rentiator .

In 2004 BT Fleet introduced a new training programme to ensure its staff understand and react to customers positively - the e-Learning BTEC Award in Customer Service - a Level 3 programme provided by Edexcel, e-assessment-4u and AdVal KeyKnowledge.

Janet Entwistle, Managing Director of BT Fleet , in introducing the programme stated commented ;

"Customer Service skills are of high priority to today's organisations and BT Fleet is no exception. Our brand, our values and our people are critical to ensuring we have satisfied customers. Customer satisfaction helps build successful businesses; it also makes it easier to keep our existing customers and to win new business."

The e-Learning BTEC Award in Customer Service delivers key customer service training - using e-Learning supported by a worldwide recognised qualification.

The initial roll-out to 20 learners included focused primarily on Workshop Managers supervisors and team leaders . As a national organisation, the learners were from as far afield as Glasgow and Reading , XX, and XX from different national Workshops including for example Glasgow, Reading and Milton Keynes. Critical for BT Fleet was that trainees could undertake the same course from wherever they were based in the country. Saving time in not having to travel to a training course as well as money for the company by not having to take staff off their job or pay travel to the training centre was seen as a key benefit of the e-Learning approach. The ability for the learners to be able to apply the learning directly, through using the e-learning CD-Roms in their own workplace was seen as a key benefit, as well as the bonus of not losing individuals from their office/workshop and reduced travelling time and costs.

Learners at the Learner Induction Day for BT Fleet. Also in the picture Gae Kennedy, Paul Wright and Sheena Raxster from BT Fleet and Linda Bickel from e-assessment-4u.

The programme, a national recognised qualification of the National Qualifications Framework (NVQ) covered the following Units:

The programme then breaks down into Modules, for instance Unit is as follows:

Module 1 - Servicing the Customer

Module 2 - Roles and Organisations

Module 3 - Improvements to Customer Service

Learners on the programme have access to many Learning Topics under the Unit and Module structure, as an example, please see a few examples below for Unit 1, Module 1:

Topic 1 - What is Customer Service?

Topic 2 - Building Customer Relationships

Topic 3 - Our Customers

Topic 4 - Dealing with Angry Customers

Examples of training pages:

The programme started in September 2004 with a mix of learner backgrounds and education attainment.

Although supported through e-Learning the programme is blended in its approach using a supportive learning environment. The programme is complemented by:

A face-to-face Induction

an on-line reference tool called Bloomsbury Business to look up key thinkers, quotes and case studies

a mentoring scheme whereby learners have access to an internal member of staff for 75 minutes a month

a dedicated assessor throughout the learning period

The e-Learning material includes interactive exercises, question banks, learning models and a high level of video to emphasis soft skills required to complete the programme. Video elements included drama sequences, soft skills demonstrations as well as a game show to illustrate important customer service elements.

The learners all followed a set structure in completing the programme as follows:

At the Induction Seminar, learners are introduced to the learning programme, the qualification, and they are taken through the assignments. Learners are also introduced to their Assessor who supports and assesses them throughout the programme. The programme also included learners who completed the learning without doing the assessment. Once completed these learners are tested to ensure they have completed and then can go on to be assessed and achieve the qualification at a later stage.

All learners receive an Induction handbook with guidance notes, assignments, hints and tips on writing assignments, deadlines and contact details.

Learners also complete a Customer Service Skills Assessment to set a benchmark for the individual learner and to also track progress throughout the course and into the workplace.

Start the programme

Learners are given the learning materials together with the deadlines for the three Unit assignments. Deadlines for BT Fleet are set within a 6-month programme.

Submitting assignments, mentoring support and receiving grades

Learners complete assignments based on the BT Fleet workplace. All assignments have been customised to BT Fleet so that their assignments are focused on the workplace and to improving the level of customer service.

e-assessment-4u, an approved Edexcel assessment centre (Centre Number: 55760) provides dedicated assessment for all learners.

Learners can also refer to their Mentors and ask them to provide feedback on their assignments before submitting to e-assessment-4u.

Once submitted, learners receive grades that include referral, fail, pass, merit, distinction. Learners also receive their grades back within 10 working days so they can reflect on their performance while the assignment is still fresh in their minds.

The BT Fleet Programme Managers also received a monthly management report detailing the progress of all learners.

Completing the e-Learning BTEC Award in Customer Service

After 6 months and successful completion of all Units, learners will receive their certificates in a graduation ceremony. The programme will then be rolled out to customer facing staff within BT Fleet.

BT Fleet will also promote the programme internally and to customers by placing posters in all Workshops.

The Results

To date BT Fleet have completed two of the three Units. Unit 1 resulted in 70% of the learners achieving a distinction grade.

Laurie Spriggs, a learner from the Milton Keynes ' Workshop commented:

"The programme has made me really think about the customer service we offer at BT Fleet and how we can improve the customer experience so they go away and tell other people they were treated really well. I was also really motivated to do the programme as I achieved a qualification once I completed the assessments."

BT Fleet is also introducing a culture of customer service excellence where the initial piloted learners are seen as achieving best customer service practice and championing this approach to other colleagues.

Crucially, BT Fleet is reporting positive outcomes from the learning to the workplace with the learners on the programme being more responsive to customers so that they retain, repurchase and also importantly to BT Fleet, recommend them to other organisations - a bottom line business objective being achieved through the programme.

For more information

For further information on this programme and other e-qualifications from AdVal KeyKnowledge, please contact Client Services on: