Satisfaction with the service we provide, for both visa applicants and the governments we serve, is TLScontact’s top priority – always.
Through the Cross-Operations function that I lead, we employ a range of technology tools that allow us to steer, monitor and control our operations, and continuously improve our performance – backed up by a team of leaders and experts who can respond rapidly and effectively to any challenges we may have, anywhere in the world.
Our technology
Our software platform enables our operations leaders to:
- Track in real-time all expected visa applications for each day, ensuring that they are processed and transferred to our government clients within the required timeframe.
- Monitor the time that visa applicants take in the documentation and biometric enrolment steps of their application process, to limit waiting times, in line with the strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) set by our government clients.
- Ensure that visa application files meet our client’s quality expectations.
- See who has processed a particular application at every step, for integrity and quality purposes.
Our client management application allows us to share this information in near real-time with the diplomatic missions and government visa departments that we serve, ensuring optimal transparency. Government clients can also access individual applications, monitor appointment tables, check that we are respecting all key SLAs and, through a dedicated module, communicate effectively with the visa centre.
Finally, through our Enterprise Feedback Management platform, we are able to collect feedback from applicants at key stages in the customer journey. This information feeds into the other data that we collect. We then collate reports for compliance and trend monitoring and carry out analysis to ensure that we meet agreed-upon service standards and can continuously improve service quality, putting in place corrective measures whenever required.
Our teams
Our centralised operations monitoring team – which we call our Control Tower – provides support to our visa application centre managers to maintain operational excellence. A daily “scorecard” completed by local operations managers helps us to ensure that all our visa application centres are ready for operations at the start of each day, and checks that operations are successfully completed at the end of the day.
The Control Tower team also carry out regular proactive checks on key performance indicators to identify any emerging risks. With the data that they gather, they monitor compliance, review performance, analyse error trends, communicate incidents and risks, and can mobilise teams to act when required.
By identifying recurring errors and understanding their root causes, we are able to implement effective strategies to prevent them from happening again.
One of the most critically important teams the Control Tower can mobilise is our Tiger Team. This is a concept made famous by the Tiger Team of NASA specialists who saved the lives of the crew of the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970. When part of the mission’s service module malfunctioned, the NASA team solved the resulting problems and got the crew safely back to Earth.
Our team of around 200 operations specialists can be mobilised at any time wherever the need arises, within a matter of hours, and its mission lasts until the incident is resolved and operations have returned to compliance. It can also be deployed to support major projects. For example, during the launch of our 32 Visa and Citizenship Application (VCAS) Service Points in the United Kingdom in October 2024, we sent a team of around 40 people to the UK for several weeks to support our local VCAS teams, and help ensure a smooth transfer from the previous service provider.
The key objective of the Cross-Operations function is to ensure that our visa application centres run like clockwork at all times. However, incidents can occur, even in a highly regulated and process-driven sector such as the visa industry, and if they do, we know that we are equipped to deal with them.
Article written by Morgan Caujolle,
Director of Cross-Operations