The specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting has launched an ‘interim division’ to provide highly skilled and knowledgeable staff to help solve organisations’ temporary skills shortages.
Current interim management customers for CCL include Orange, BUPA and Aviva.
CCL’s managing director, Simon Rustom, explained:
“In the current economic recessionary climate, ‘costs are king’. So, while all the ‘gurus’ tell us that we shouldn’t be cutting costs indiscriminately, the reality is that projects are being stopped in an attempt to cut costs; organisations are reducing their headcounts – making staff redundant, and so on.
“Because of cost cutting that has already taken place, many organisations are now realising that they have shortages in some of the skills that are key to their business. In looking to overcome this problem, these organisations want to have access to these skills – but on a more flexible basis and at a lower rate than they were used to paying.”
Sally Rustom, head of CCL’s interim division, commented that:
“CCL’s interim division has staff working on projects in the private health, telecoms and financial services sectors. All of our clients in these sectors are buying our interims’ customer management expertise in a range of skills – including sales skills, contact centre management, IT, business strategists, project management, HR and training.
“This offers companies an excellent opportunity to bring in highly skilled and experienced people on a temporary, interim basis, rather than merely outsource these projects to large consultancies. CCL, with its expanding bank of highly knowledgeable and skilled consultants, is both able and happy to supply these high calibre people.
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“We’re finding that companies are now keen to invest in customer-related projects,” she continued. “While, in the past, there was a great deal of interest in investing in IT systems and the latest technology, most of this new investment is being directed towards customer retention activities.
“Traditionally, selling IT systems on the basis of what they can do rather than what the business needs has resulted in disappointment because these systems could not deliver the results that were required. The key watchword today seems to be not what IT can do for a business but what the business needs from its IT.”
