December is the busiest month for the Provident call-center, with thousands of calls going in and out every day. Even though the vacation time during the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year is fairly split in between the over 100 team-members, there were still around 80 people who were working around this period, in shifts of 4, 6 or 8 hours. Traditionally, employers reward their employees during the holidays with a small bonus or a Christmas basket. But for Provident, this was not enough. To prove that Provident is one of the top employers in the financial sector, we wanted to do something special for the employees that would ignite a conversation outside the walls of the company.

Happy Calls is an internal activation program that brought holiday cheer to the office to those employees who were working during the holiday season.

For two days, as the call-center employees were going about their days, we surprised them with calls from an actor playing Santa Clause, an opera singer and a group of carolling children. The entire process was documented in both the call center and the studio that was sending out the calls. The call-center employees were told in advance that the camera crew was filming around the offices for a company movie, but none of them knew what was going on. After they received the “happy call”, they were asked to keep it confidential as to not ruin the surprise for their colleagues.

Generated campaign awareness: * The video was viewed 550.000 times, obtained in 2 weeks (youtube – 537000 unique views, the rest from facebook & social media) – source: youtube, media report Generate positive associations for Provident via online : „Happy Calls” managed to start a conversation and solidify its position as top employer in the financial sector. There were 56 press mentions of the „Happy Calls” activation during the first week of its launch, which is the highest number of mentions ever to be received by Provident as an employer. (source: media report)