South West Contact Centre Awards
Lucie Horsham – Team Leader of the Year
Dealer Contact Services – Motability Operations
Motability Operations (MO) is a not-for-profit company that runs the Motability car scheme-the largest
fleet operator in the UK, and the biggest supplier of used cars to the trade. Motability Operations
currently works with 4,500 new car dealers, to ensure that 630,000 disabled people across the UK are
given a ‘worry-free’ motoring package suitable for their mobility needs.
Within Motability, Dealer Contact Services (DCS) are responsible for providing first class customer
service to our Dealer network.
Why Lucie?
Lucie is a highly motivated, committed and enthusiastic individual who takes great pride in her work and
her team. She strongly believes in giving her team personal development, ongoing support and driving
their performance to encourage them to meet their full potential to be the best they can be. She
regularly recognises and values individuals for their efforts and continuous improvement but is also very
honest and will address any areas of concerns with any member of her team. Her enthusiasm for the
role is highly infectious to her peer group and also her team where she has inspired and built a highly
supportive and engaging team culture that thrive on achieving and exceeding their performance results
to meet business requirements.
About Lucie
Lucie has been employed by Motability Operations (MO) for nearly 8 years and has worked in various
departments throughout the organisation at different levels. The experience she has gained in this time
has given Lucie a fantastic insight into how to manage, motivate and inspire people as well as gaining
strong process knowledge and good working relationships across the business. Lucie began her career
at Mo as an advisor in DCS. From here she moved into training where she managed a project to create,
design and write the training for the whole of DCS. Once she finished this secondment she returned to
DCS for 6 months and supported management and the department through the closure of DCS in
London. Her next career move was into Coaching. Lucie stayed in this role for 2 years and enjoyed
every moment. In this role she was able to immerse herself fully in different learning styles, the
importance of self development and truly understand the best way to motivate and encourage people.
She was very successful in this role and in April 2012 made the move back to DCS as a Team leader.
She has come on in leaps and bounds since joining the Management Team and has proven herself to
be a naturally supportive and successful leader.
Approach to leadership
Lucie’s philosophy towards work, in each area of the business, has always been to be the best at what
she does and to work hard at inspiring the people around her. She uses positive messages and a ‘firm
but fair’ management style to ensure that she gets the best from her people and they get the best from
her. Lucie will take a measured approach towards managing her people, thinking about what’s best for
the individual and balancing that against the needs of the business. Lucie make’s sure that there is a
relationship built on trust and understanding with her team, giving her advisors clear boundaries and
encouraging two way feedback as well as looking to improve her own style whilst learning what suits
others. She very much believes in empowering her advisors to do as much for them selves as they can.
She believes that it is vital for her people to be in charge of their own development and progression. By
giving her advisors the power to set their own goals and achievements they are more likely to achieve
these. They are the driving force for their development and Lucie is there to support and encourage
them to achieve their goals.
Dedication to excellent customer service
Lucie has exceptional dedication and passion towards customer service. This is a passion she lives
and breaths every day with her team and the department. She is very dedicated to giving her advisors
the best possible opportunity to develop their skills to ensure they give excellent customer service to
our dealers at all times. Due to her history with the company Lucie has the advantage of knowing the
role her team do like the back of her hand. She can understand the pressures they can sometimes feel,
as she felt them herself. She recognises this and uses her previous experience to support her team
where she knows they need it best. She still to this day will support the phones and the floor when we
are busy and never hesitates to jump on the phone and take calls herself. Her team love this and it’s a
great example of her dedication to leading her team by example, anything they need to do she is more
than willing to do herself.
People Development
Lucie has a had a number of successes in her team over the last 12 months where individuals have
achieved personal goals, secured work promotions and progressed into other areas. These include:
 An advisor being successful in her application to join the Develop programme.
 A number of new team members successfully completing and passing their 6 months probation
period.
 A team member securing a role as the resource manager for the floor.
 Laura, a member of her team, is the most recent example of success in Team Lucie. Laura
successfully earned a place on Develop. Develop is a programme run by other managers
across Mo that gives the advisor community the opportunity to develop their skills and
knowledge to help them meet their future career aspirations. Lucie worked with Laura
extensively whist she was applying supporting her with her application and presentation. Lucie
couldn’t have been more excited and proud of Laura when we heard she had successfully
achieved a place on the programme.
In addition to this Lucie has also experienced many challenging situations where people have not been
performing to the standards they should be. In some cases this has resulted in people’s probation
ending early and leaving the business or Lucie has needed to make the decision to further support
someone who isn’t achieving their stats with a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). These decisions
are never taking lightly by Lucie and she will always work with the individual involved very closely
before that option is explored. She will ensure extensive coaching and manager support are put in
place, either in the form of weekly manager 121’s or weekly coaching sessions to give them the best
support she can to boost their performance.
Coaching and Quality
Lucie works very closely with the Coaching Manager to ensure DCS, our advisors and our customer
have the best support from the coaching community. As this is a focus close to her heart she dedicates
time each month to spend with DCS’s coaches to plan for the month ahead. Lucie will look at the month
and see what potentially could be a hot topic on the phones. For example in March and September
Lucie knows we will be busy as they are our plate change months. She will brief the coaches and ask
that they support the advisors as much as they can as these months are especially busy on the floor
and can be difficult for the advisors. She will also ensure that the advisors are prepared as best they
can be when new processes are introduced, working closely with the training team who support us
during these changes.
She has introduced a number of new development opportunities for our advisors in DCS, these include:
DCS Workshops:
Every quarter Lucie has organised for the Coaches to support group Workshops for the advisors across
that month. The topics of the workshops are suggested and decided by the advisors, further
emphasising her dedication to self development. These workshops are then made available for the
advisors to sign up to and have been a great success.
Lunch time levelling:
Rotated with the DCS workshops Lucie has also set up regular lunch-time levelling sessions. Every
quarter the floor is offered the opportunity to spend some of their own time listening to each others calls
and grading them. This is a fantastic opportunity for the advisors to learn from each other and it also
gives them the confidence to share their work with others. Lucie has worked hard to give her advisors
the confidence to do this and she knows the benefits this will have on their development as well as the
service we offer our customers.
Business Focus- Challenge, Change, Review
One of Lucie’s biggest achievements in the last 12 months has been ‘Challenge, Change, and Review’
(CCR).This was a department wide project set up to hear what our advisors thought and felt about
processes and procedures. They were encouraged to pick apart existing processes and make
suggestions for change and improvements. Lucie played a key part in the running of CCR and used her
own initiative to push the project forward across the floor.
She fully understands the importance of advisor buy in and knows that a key part of keeping your
workforce engaged is to give them the power to make changes and improvements to their own roles.
Lucie recognises that the opinion of our advisors if vital to the continued success of the department.
Due to the success of the project Lucie felt that is was important to keep encouraging our advisors to
make suggestions for change or share best practice. From this she set up an online message board
that is available to all our advisors to sign into and create new topic’s and comment on others. This has
been a great success for Lucie and we have seen some fantastic results from this project.
These include:
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A reduction in calls into DCS by 1000 per month. This was due to the introduction of an
improved search tool, as suggested by a DCS advisor.
All advisors in DCS spent the day in a Motability dealership. This was suggested by an advisor
and was a great opportunity for the advisors to truly understand the pressures our dealers feel,
ensuring we can give them the best support that they need.
New messages updated in Online Application (the main system used by DCS). This resulted in
a 6% reduction in calls, around 1500 per month, after a suggestion from two DCS advisors.
In Summary
Lucie brings the best out of her people and her team results over the past 12 months have been
exceptional. Lucie is a very highly thought of manager across DCS as well a throughout Motability
Operations and has worked hard to build this great reputation. Lucie is really great at focusing on the
performance of her team, and fully understands the importance of keeping morale high in DCS. Our
customer’s and her people are at the heart of everything she does.
Lucie is very well respected across the department and has built great relationships across the floor.
Lucie is a natural people person and this has supported her in driving her team to achieve some
exceptional results.
Lucie deserves the recognition that this process brings and I fully support her in this journey.