Earlier this year, QStory & Nationwide Building Society proudly received a Partnership Award at The Forum Awards. We recently caught up with The Forum to discuss key learnings from the awarded project and what’s next for enterprise workforce management (WFM).
Key Project Impact at a Glance
- Operational Parity: Brought front office schedule flexibility and self-service to complex back office operations.
- Capacity Recovery: Automated manual administrative planning, freeing team leaders to focus on coaching, compliance, and staff retention.
- Risk & Response Optimisation: Faster task routing enabled real-time response to urgent fraud alerts, protecting vulnerable members.
A Summary of the Back Office Project
Since QStory & Nationwide Building Society began working together in 2020, our shared focus has been supporting and empowering frontline colleagues with greater schedule flexibility, while giving operations and team leaders the real-time tools needed to direct complex workflows. This year, we achieved a new strategic milestone together by bringing this model into back office operations.
The Challenge
Nationwide Building Society set out to improve its operational effectiveness in managing workforce planning for its Fraud and Scam Prevention (FSP) team. Legacy processes were fragmented and siloed and relied on manual methods, including Excel spreadsheets. Critically, the extensive administrative burden of manual scheduling eroded team leaders’ capacity to support, coach, and retain staff.
On top of this, their back office colleagues were not receiving the same level of flexibility already afforded to front office teams. The goal was to create parity across the board, whilst creating a single environment for planning, monitoring, and reporting.
The Solution
By adapting QStory’s platform to suit back office needs, we implemented a solution for centralised forecasting, optimised scheduling, employee engagement and in-depth performance analytics. Key tools included:
- Work Item Manager: Acting as a “back office ACD”, the Work Item Manager tracks true handling times for back office tasks and prioritises distribution of tasks based on SLAs.
- Centralised Forecasting & Scheduling: a dynamic forecasting engine and Schedule Manager were introduced to automatically generate schedules based on a true view of demand.
- Self-Service Agent App: QStory’s core Intraday Automation platform was rolled out, providing an app where staff can manage their schedules, request holidays, and view KPIs.
The Impact
These tailored solutions delivered transformational benefits across the board. Back office staff now enjoy the same flexibility as the front office, autonomously managing their schedules via the app while intelligent guardrails seamlessly protect service levels. By automating administrative tasks, team managers regained valuable time to focus on coaching, and the Work Item Manager’s robust data helped with strategic planning. Crucially, these internal improvements translated into an even better customer experience. With the right people in the right place, the team can respond to fraud alerts even faster and provide highly empathetic support during critical interactions.
By eliminating spreadsheet-driven administration, team leaders reclaimed vital capacity for high-value coaching and operational governance. Crucially, these improvements translated directly into enhanced member protection: with the right specialists deployed at the right time, the team responds to fraud alerts more efficiently and continue to deliver empathetic support during critical member interactions.
Looking Ahead
Following the award win, Barry Jones, Product Director at QStory, and Lisa Strudwick, Channel Performance Senior Partner at Nationwide Building Society, caught up with The Forum in a virtual Best Practice Showcase to discuss the crucial lessons learned and what the future holds for our partnership.
Since the award entry, QStory & Nationwide Building Society have continued to enhance the FSP team’s experience through the roll-out of a simplified front-end user interface and improved downstream reporting, bringing together forecasts and telephony data into one summarised view. The platform is expanding into further areas of their business, ensuring the business can track and optimise the time spent assisting vulnerable customers. There’s also been a new, heavy focus on extending QStory’s support into Nationwide Building Society’s branch network.
Reflecting on the ongoing project, the organisations have identified critical success factors in managing the pace of change and prioritising downstream reporting needs earlier on in new technology implementations. Adopting the iterative approach that was used, working in steps and testing all the way, ensures the final solution is much better suited to the business than a large-scale, all-at-once rollout could have been.
The ongoing success of QStory & Nationwide Building Society’s partnership is driven by an open, trusting relationship whereby the two teams continuously collaborate to build the best possible solution for colleagues and leadership. As The Forum Award judges highlighted in the webinar.
“I think the strength of the partnership, openness and shared understanding of the operational reality, the operational needs and what success looked like, allowed them to work together to deliver a great solution.”
Penny Hicks, Director of Finance & Partnerships, The Forum
Modernise Your Back Office Operations
To discover how QStory’s Back Office platform can bring parity and visibility to your back office teams, contact us or request a demo.