Blue Arrow’s text service strengthens customer satisfaction

Blue Arrow, a part of the Impellam Group, is one of the UK’s leading staffing businesses specialising in industrial, driving, logistics, catering and office recruitment solutions. Operating through a nationwide network of branches, Blue Arrow, 50 years on, is still assisting its clients, candidates and employees to be successful through a dedicated team of recruitment experts.

In today’s volatile economic climate, ensuring that as many people are in employment as possible has become even more important. The key, however, is to match people with job opportunities in the most targeted and efficient manner.

The dynamic business environment that we are operating in requires organisations like Blue Arrow to have the technology and capability to respond to workload fluctuations as well as planned and unplanned absences to best serve its customers.

Prior to using Blue Text, Blue Arrow depended on manual labour; its staff had to individually call each appropriate job applicant to communicate the current job posting and then text the job logistics if the applicant was available.

In 2003 Blue Arrow partnered with WIN to deliver cost effective processes for clients such as Sodexho Defence and Compass to help strengthen customer satisfaction through highly responsive recruitment. Blue Arrow also looked to WIN to help differentiate themselves in a growing market of job placement companies.

Through the Blue Text service, WIN has helped Blue Arrow build its capacity to provide flexible and efficient permanent and temporary staffing solutions. Using WIN’s technology, Blue Arrow is able to send SMS messages to a large database of targeted applicants for its clients’ current job vacancies. Once an applicant receives the text with the job details, they are then able to contact Blue Arrow to confirm their availability.

The technical capability of bulk SMS messaging not only allows Blue Arrow to be more time efficient in placing people with job opportunities, but it also allows the company quicker access to a wider audience of applicants.

In urgent circumstances, when a Blue Arrow customer needed staff immediately, locating an applicant and managing the job coordination was difficult to turn around quickly. However, since partnering with WIN Blue Arrow now has the ability to deliver multiple and targeted job opportunities to prospective employees via Blue Text. Blue Arrow processes approximately 65,000 messages per month.

Naomi Stuart, Marketing & Communications Manager for Blue Arrow described the Blue Text service as “an innovative method of reaching the vast pool of applicants they seek to match job opportunities with. Before Blue Text our team would have to contact approximately 300 applicants and spend 1-2 minutes with them on the phone gathering their availability. This was not only costly for us, but it opens up the opportunity for other recruiters to fill jobs with the people we’re hoping to employ for our customers.

Now using WIN technology, we’re able to reach applicants quicker and more efficiently. This gives us the ability to better service our customers by filling vacancies urgently when needed and help compensate any staff turnover.”

Graham Rivers, Chief Executive at WIN said “SMS messaging as a tool for companies to reach their target audience is gaining momentum as the mobile device gradually becomes the primary medium for marketing and conducting business. The way in which businesses can gain a competitive advantage in the market depends on how they choose to use this tool. Blue Arrow has recognised bulk SMS messaging as the way forward in efficiently fulfilling job vacancies. We’re happy to be helping them grow stronger as a company by providing them technology that allows them to place people in the right jobs in a highly responsive and cost effective way!”

To conclude, Naomi added “In the end, WIN’s Blue Text service satisfies the size and scale that Blue Arrow sought, all at a competitive price.”

About Blue Arrow

Operating through a nationwide network of branches, Blue Arrow is one of the UK's largest staffing businesses specialising in industrial, driving, logistics, catering and office recruitment solutions. In 2009 we celebrated 50 years of matching the right people with the right jobs.

For further information, visit www.bluearrow.co.uk