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Humm is an award-winning fintech company that provides a product ecosystem of buy now pay later, credit cards and business finance products.
The business is growing rapidly: up 40% year-on-year, it now has 2.7 million customers across Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK. Humm has just launched in Canada and it’s about to launch another third major corporate partnership, this time with Air New Zealand.
Massive growth always causes a few growing pains, but – with help from Datacom – Humm turned its fast-expanding scale into a competitive advantage.
Humm initially had three independent call centres working in silo, in New Zealand, Australia and Manila. Before 2020, each call centre was running its own systems, which created inefficiencies as the business grew.
To improve its systems and customer experiences, in 2020 Humm implemented the Genesys platform across its call centres. While Genesys is well suited to Humm, the fast-growing business wasn’t yet getting the best from the platform. So Humm asked Datacom for some advice – and the Datacom team immediately stepped in. They spent five weeks at Humm learning all about Humm’s processes, products and people.
“When you implement a new telephony system, you don’t know what you don’t know,” says Brendon Clark, Head of Workforce Management and Customer Improvement at Humm Group.
“You just stand up what you previously had. By working with Datacom we were able to identify where we were adding unnecessary complexity. Datacom helped us find ways to get better outcomes, reducing complexities for agents so it’s easier for them to do their job.”
Using Genesys across all three call centre locations, Humm has been able to make some impressive improvements. The most immediate change was been the ability to flow calls through their centres.
“When New Zealand is overrun with calls, we can move calls to Manila, and from Manila to Adelaide,” explains Brendon.
“That’s been one of the biggest game changers, because we only have budget for a certain number of people, so moving the calls means we can handle more volume. We can move with the sun, providing longer call centre hours in all our locations without local people having to work those hours. It’s been amazing for us.”
Early on, Datacom identified the high call volumes as an issue and came up with several ways to tackle it. One was digital chat, which provides immediate online service from an agent via the Humm website. Another major improvement has been the ability to shift voice contacts to Humm’s chat channel during busy periods.
“When we see a spike in calls, we can play a message on the IVR saying ‘We are experiencing a high volume of calls and all our consultants are currently busy. However, if you would like us to send you an SMS with a link to chat with our online team Press 1, otherwise please continue to hold and a member of our team will be with you as soon as possible’.”
This has resulted in a better customer experience and reduced wait times on voice channels and means the Humm team can use their people more efficiently.
“We get a lot of positive feedback on this – people love having options,” says Brendon. “And it has a financial impact, because every minute that a customer is on hold it costs us money.”
Humm is also launching a virtual assistant, which will triage customers into the best channel for their enquiry.
“The virtual assistant means we can focus on value-adding interactions that create customer delight, rather than dealing with low-value queries like changing a postal address.”
Feedback has shown customers appreciate having more options for assistance, and they much prefer not having to wait on hold if possible – and their improved experience is also having a meaningful impact on Humm’s 400 call centre agents:
“With long wait times people are annoyed when you finally get to them, but with a call back they’re fresh and they appreciate that you’ve called. They’re much happier, which makes the agents’ job easier.”
Plus, by better managing call flows around the world, local agents are enjoying a better work-life balance, which contributes to better staff retention and higher job satisfaction. All that, and Humm is saving both time and money.
“When it comes to phone queues, even small inputs and improvements are a big deal,” Brendon adds. “We’re more efficient now and I think it’s now possible that we’ll need fewer agents to service the same volume of enquiries.”
With both consumer and commercial buy now pay later products, several major branded Mastercards and B2B lending, Humm is continually innovating to stay at the forefront of a highly competitive market.
“We’re market leading because we’re always evolving – we’re at the cutting edge of fintech,” says Brendon. “As we innovate with products, we also have to innovate internally in the ways we serve those products. We’re constantly running to keep up with the product team, and we’ve got shareholders we need to please as well.”
Brendon says the Datacom team has played a role in helping Humm innovate at pace, providing insights and support at every stage of product development and implementation.
“Datacom is with us right throughout. They empowered us to be able to use our IVR [interactive voice response] better, so instead of logging a ticket and paying Datacom to make a change, we can now do it ourselves. That has saved us time and saves on our invoice, which I really appreciate.”
“It’s great working with Datacom,” Brendon says. “They’ve been a real game changer, allowing us to use our scale as a strength and having happier customers who talk us up. It’s a very competitive market and this gives us a point of difference.”