Marketing

Lebara’s customer-centric service offering

Monica Woodley

Editorial director, EMEA

Monica is editorial director for The Economist Intelligence Unit's thought leadership division in EMEA. As such, she manages a team of editors across the region who produce bespoke research programmes for a range of clients. In her five years with the Economist Group, she personally has managed research programmes for companies such as Barclays, BlackRock, State Street, BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, EY, Deloitte and PwC, on topics ranging from the impact of financial regulation, to the development of innovation ecosystems, to how consumer demand is driving retail innovation.

Monica regularly chairs and presents at Economist conferences, such as Bellwether Europe, the Insurance Summit and the Future of Banking, as well as third-party events such as the Globes Israel Business Conference, the UN Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights and the Geneva Association General Assembly. Prior to joining The Economist Group, Monica was a financial journalist specialising in wealth and asset management at the Financial Times, Euromoney and Incisive Media. She has a master’s degree in politics from Georgetown University and holds the Certificate of Financial Planning.

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Lebara is one of the fastest growing private companies in Europe, originally set up in the Netherlands. Targeted at immigrants, it offers low-cost mobile phone calls to international destinations. But while others might balance this with low-cost service and support, Lebara instead focuses its efforts on never losing its customers by providing excellent service and support, despite the additional costs required. The firm has won several customer service awards, most recently for best customer service at the 2011 UK Mobile News Awards.

The CEO, Ratheesan Yoganathan, says his firm sees its employees as its most crucial asset, especially within its call centres where all client interaction takes place. Instead of measuring how many calls staff take, for example, or how quickly they finish them, staff are measured on how successfully they delivered a positive service outcome for a customer without having to transfer the call or keep clients on hold. Overall, Mr Yoganathan is resolute on the crucial role that employees play in his firm’s service delivery. “Our staff are part of Lebara’s identity, as they’re our customer touch-point,” he says.

This realisation has led to some unusual decisions. For one, Lebara’s main call centre is located right in the heart of London, at significant cost. In Mr Yoganathan’s view, this allows his firm to hire the best possible talent, including staff with a wide range of language skills, by being able to tap into a huge skills base. “You get really talented people, so staff in our call centres often move on to other departments, such as IT or marketing. They’re really high quality.”

This is not just idle talk: Lebara even hosts an annual contest for all employees, entitled “Dream big”, whereby anyone can pitch new business ideas to the management committee. The winning pitch is given an investment of £100,000. “Last year the options were so good, we had to select two people,” says Mr Yoganathan.

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