In 2020 I had a number of occasions to ring a particular Internet provider regarding the failure of their service.
The company had a number of channels I could review, e mail, twitter, and pages of frequently asked questions , I could chat with a bot but none could replace the immediacy of a phone call.
In the end it took 6 weeks to resolve the issue and the call centre staff and I had to talk to many different people as no one person owned my issue or followed it up. The processes did not allow for it.
Call Centres are crucial to customer retention and if companies are to have dedicated representatives then they must be empowered to make decisions, and in many cases they are not nor do they have the facility to follow up with the customer issue reported which provides a negative interaction.
Call Centres can contribute greatly to the bottom line of a company but are usually reviewed as a cost centre.
Efficient call centres run well with clear processes that meet or exceed customer expectations.
If you are going to hire for a call centre and look for people with excellent communication skills then follow it up with training , coaching , call reviews and 121’s and yet provide the agents with scripts that sound robotic, unnatural, and then not allow the agent to go off script.
As customer expectations are always changing so too should your call centre.
The old metrics such as
80% of calls answered in 20 secs
5-8% accepted abandoned rate
Quality call reviews of 90%
Data from customer service survey after the call.
These are not the new metrics of an Evolving call centre in 2020 and during Covid19.
Time to review your call centre.
bjkennomotivation can assist in the coaching of call centre managers to meet their objectives in this new situation.
bjkennomotivation.com
