Today, we get to know Tony Beaumont, Customer Support Associate in the Customer Operations Team. We find out how he starts his day, what it takes to do his role, whether he could take on one hundred tiny horses, and much more!
Hi Tony! Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me! Tell me about your morning routine, and what you do to get the workday started?
I’m an early riser, but it depends which shift I’m on. I don’t like tea or coffee and - a lot of people might disagree but - my first drink is usually some sort of energy drink! Every morning I’ll chill for ten minutes, take a walk down the shops or seafront, then come home and start the day.
I tend to log in 15 minutes before my shift starts. Firstly, I’ll check ticket volume, see what needs to be responded to. Then I’ll check Slack notifications, and see if there’s outstanding tickets from the day before that need actioning.
The Customer Operations Team work in shifts. You’ve got the early, mid, and late shift, and we start at slightly different times.
Early and late shifts are focused on tickets - you don’t take any calls. If you’re on the mid-shift, you’ll be working phones without dealing with tickets. At lunchtime, we swap - so early and late shifts will do phones, mid-shift will do tickets.
It’s a recent change but it seems to be working well so far. It means it’s more fair to everybody as we share the workload and customers get the support they need.
What is your role at INSHUR, and how would you explain it to your best friend?
I’m a Customer Support Associate. My main responsibility is dealing directly with customers, whether that’s via the virtual assistant, email, or over the phone. I deal with updates, queries, changing details, and signposting to finance or claims.
Recently, the Broker team merged with the customer support function, so we deal with Broker queries now too.
What’s one aspect of your role that people might find surprising or that they might not know much about?
That’s a difficult question because customer service is very broad, but people think you’re just dealing with queries all day. They don’t realise the investigations we go into - there could be queries about finance or questions about their account that we need to look deeper into.
There are other instances where we might have to reach out to the claims team, especially if what the customer is saying doesn’t match what we have on screen. So it’s not always a case of pick up the phone, solve the question and off the customer goes.
Customers do remember who they’ve spoken to as well, and sometimes ask for certain agents. I recognize customer names too, especially where I’ve had to sort out bigger issues for them in the past and they ring in months later.
That leads me nicely into my next question - what skills do you think are most important for your role?
Empathy is definitely most important. Customers have a variety of different queries that need to be looked into.
We had a case last week where a customer just welcomed a new baby. He’d been off work for a couple of weeks, so we paused his finance for a short period so he could get back to earning and pay his missed direct debit. Definitely, empathy is a big skill in cases like this.
You also need an understanding of our customers - for a lot of our customers, English isn’t their first language, so it’s understanding that and being able to adapt when having a conversation with them.
Why is your role integral to the team that you work with?
Customer service is integral to the business as a whole, it’s not just my role in particular.
But I would say everyone within the team is integral in their role, because of what we do for the company. If you didn’t have customer service, you’d have nobody to serve the customers to solve their issues and their problems.
Each individual will bring their own ability and personality to that role, which can bring out personalities in the rest of the team and make others more confident. It’s what makes our team great!
Can you share a recent accomplishment or project that you’re particularly proud of (doesn’t have to be work related!)
I did Brave the Shave in July, raising money for MacMillan Cancer Support. It was completely out of the blue - I spent 5 years growing my hair, and then I shaved it all off! I’ve still got the skinhead now because I’m growing it back, but I raised £340!
In terms of work accomplishments, we had an audit earlier this year and we needed to have all previous team processes brought up to date. I was asked to re-write them, and I re-wrote 11 processes in two days. They really helped, and they were used.
I got a recognition award from Bruce, Kirsty & Lola for “Dedication to always helping colleagues and being an asset to customer operations.”
You’re currently working from home, what’s on your desk right now?
Relentless, my phone, bits and bobs!
What is your most - watched TV at the moment?
My most-watched TV (and I’m a sucker for this) is a show called Below Deck. It’s an unscripted show where billionaires rent a yacht, and all the crew are filmed too. They’ve got Below Deck Med, Below Deck Sailing, Below Deck Down Under, Below Deck Adventure …
(Victoria - “Wow!”)
Yeah - I’ve seen them all at least two or three times, my partner’s getting fed up now! But it’s easy background viewing.
We did recently start watching The Good Wife and it’s spin-off, and that’s very good.
It’s the last question! Would you rather fight a horse sized duck, or 100 duck sized horses?
Ooo! 100 tiny horses.
(Victoria - “How would you take them out?”)
Stand on a brick wall. If you’ve got a duck the size of a horse, a duck can fly. But if you’ve got a hundred duck-sized horses, you can step on a wall and they can’t get you. Take them on one by one, you can pick them up! You have the upper advantage.
Thank you so much to Tony for chatting to us about his day, and about his obsession with Below Deck!