Kelly Group and Hughes have been working in partnership for more than 10 years. Successful projects during this time include the installation, replacement and maintenance of lottery terminals across 36,000+ sites nationwide.
The Spotlight is on Customer Experience
Customer experience is fast becoming the byword for retailers everywhere. But the experience doesn’t just need to be great in generic terms, it needs to be designed carefully to match the overall customer proposition.
When hope is at the heart of everything you do, making sure the customer experience mirrors customer expectations is vital.
Each week the UK National Lottery offers hope to thousands of people – both to individuals who hope to win the opportunity to change their lives and to the thousands of people associated with projects funded by the lottery who hope to benefit from the funds raised.
But hope can be fleeting. Camelot, who runs the UK National Lottery, needs to make sure that the experience they offer to customers when they purchase their ticket is the best it can be. At its core this experience has three main elements:
- Accessibility – the opportunity to play needs to be available throughout the entire UK
- Speed – the transaction needs to be quick and easy with minimal queue time
- Availability – the service needs to be up and running all the time
With a distributed service offering comprising 36,000+ locations, a wide choice of games to increase customer engagement and a time-sensitive proposition on the main game that creates peak playing times, it is no easy feat to get that customer experience right.
Let’s not forget that Camelot needs to deliver all of this at an optimum cost point to make sure that as much funding as possible can be allocated to charitable projects around the UK.
Combining the high availability of the network with a speed of delivery and the capacity to offer an engaging point of sale, information to customers requires specialist expertise in designing the right network and management solutions to ensure an always-on experience for customers.
Fundamental Partnerships of Lottery Terminal Installations
Camelot and Hughes Network Services Europe (HNSE) have been working closely together for 14 years.
Hughes has considerable expertise in Network Services and continues to deliver a standardised service across the entire National Lottery estate however remote the location.
In turn, to ensure Camelot and their customers receive an excellent experience, Hughes needs to work with partners whom they trust to deliver the right service to Camelot every time there is a need for engineering support. For that, Hughes relies on the Kelly Group.
Kelly Group’s Role in the Lottery Terminal Installation Project
With many locations reliant on specialist VSAT technology, the network requires highly skilled engineering expertise throughout the installation and maintenance process.
Kelly Group has been providing support to Hughes for the Camelot network for more than 10 years. In that time, the group has taken on the responsibility to offer a range of services including installation, relocation and replacement of lottery terminals across 36,000+ sites nationwide.
Kelly Group has supported Hughes with the installation works of 12,700 sites, with an estimated 8,000 sites installed in 2012 alone.
But it’s not just about installation. To ensure Lottery Terminals are always available for customers to play they need to be working and the network that they communicate over needs to be always on. Kelly Group delivers a 364-day maintenance service for all retail sites so as soon as Hughes identifies a fault a Kelly Group engineer will be dispatched to fix the problem.
The close relationship between Kelly Group and Hughes means we can work together to deliver a fast and effective resolution of issues and identify areas to continuously improve our service to customers.
“Working in partnership with Kelly Group to deliver installation and support services across some of the Camelot estates gives Hughes the confidence that they can deliver an outstanding experience to Camelot and their customers.” Hughes Network Services Europe (HNSE)
Kelly Group and Hughes work together on several customer networks throughout the UK including 24/7 services to a well know fuel retailer, WiFi and terrestrial technology support to leading specialist retailers, including airside locations and VSAT maintenance for a major Utility company.
Overcoming Challenges During a Global Pandemic
In a time of national crisis, our partnership approach proved its worth. The combined effort of Kelly Group and Hughes assessing and complying with Government guidelines helped us to introduce new Covid-19 safe procedures to our teams to ensure the safety and welfare of our engineers whilst working onsite. This meant we were able to continue to deliver maintenance and support services throughout the tightening and easing of restrictions across the UK.
It is our unique approach to working in such a close partnership that enables Kelly Group and Hughes to continue to deliver an exceptional, highly available service to customers.
