The 19 point call centre review you can do today

October 11, 2010 By 3 Comments

Recently I had to deal with my Telecom supplier.  As a result of the incredibly bad service I received I’m putting pen to paper to give you a 19 point call centre review that you can do today to provide better service;- from the customer’s perspective!

Speech Recognition Systems

A poorly set up SRS (Speech Recognition System) can be an incredibly frustrating experience for the customer!

My experience

Recently I called my Telecom provider to ask some questions: how could I increase my plan with them, and what did I need to do to ensure I had global roaming on my phone for my upcoming overseas trip.

I was answered by a Speech Recognition System that could not process my prompts.  Firsly, it was very frustrating talking to a Speech Recognition System that kept asking me to repeat my needs in “a couple of words” so that it could direct my call to the most appropriate person.

I was prompted 5 times for a response, and in doing so gave a different, shorter, more direct answer in the hope that the cheery automated voice would connect me to a live person.

All to no avail!

To make matters worse it couldn’t even understand my request to “talk to an operator”

This customer was already frustrated and annoyed before I got to talk to a person!

Call Centre Review steps

1)      On a regular basis you and/or your Team should play the part of a customer calling into your CC (Contact Centre) to ensure that your SRS is working for you and not against you to service your customer needs.

2)      Ensure that you SRS is able to understand the prompt “speak to an operator” and is able to push the call through accordingly.

3)      Always have an “out” prompt that allows a caller to move straight through to a live agent.

4)      Keep the prompt flows of your SRS system simple and concise.

5)      Ensure your SRS does not “loop” at any stage of the flow process so a customer is able to get back to a previous menu or is not left in a continuous loop.

6)      Check your IVR flows using this process as well

You may be amazed when you start playing the part of a customer trying to call into your business.

Meeting the Customers expectations of Service /Service Level Agreements (SLA)s

Exceeding customers expectations of service is a sure way to increase sales and ensure your customers stay with you.

My situation

Having finally reached an agent, I posed my questions to her about my plan; asking her to confirm the current details of it and how I should go about increasing my monthly spend.

By this stage I assumed that the questions would be easily answered and I would be able to finish the call, increase my monthly spend with the company and live happily ever after.

Nothing could be more from the truth!

The agent advised me that she couldn’t answer my questions as she didn’t have the information to hand and somebody would have to call me back – within the next 5 – 10 working days!

Doesn’t that seem like a long time to have to wait to want to spend more money with a business?

She also proceeded to confirm my current account information but advised me that my “data” allocation was more than the figure stated on the bill that I had directly in front of me.

When I questioned this she advised me that the bill was wrong and must of been an “old style bill” which showed the incorrect amount!

I began to wonder what else was wrong with the details on the bill but didn’t really have a chance to get clarification as it was obvious that the agent wanted to ring off the call and end the conversation.  Maybe there is a disproportional focus on AHT in this particular Call Centre.

The call ended with me being advised that I would receive a call back from the business within the next 5 -10 working days from someone that could advise me how I could increase my monthly spend.

12 days later, you guessed it I hadn’t received a call back, and so the story goes on.

Call Centre Review steps

7)      On a regular basis play the part of a customer calling into your Contact Centre to ensure that your business processes are able to support the most basic of customer enquiries and provide satisfactory solutions for your customers needs.

8)      Ensure that if an expectation is set for your business to call a customer back it is met and processed within the nominated time periods.  Make sure the turnaround times are reasonable and as quick as possible.

9)       Have relevant information available to your staff so that they can easily process and answer any type of query they may receive.  At the very least give the customer the opportunity to be able to be warm transferred to someone that can help them.

10)   Ensure that your staff never utilise internal processes as being at fault for incorrect information being provided to the customer as it does not provide confidence for the customer.

11)   Always ensure that towards the end of the call your staff ask the customer if “there is anything else they can help with”.   You may be surprised by the number of instant cross-sell and up-sell opportunities you uncover.

Issue Logging / Complaint Handling

Capturing  relevant information about a customer’s issue ensures that they are resolved quickly and accurately.  The information gathered also allows your business to reduce like occurrences increasing the overall satisfaction of customers and reducing your costs.

My situation

12 days after my initial call and not having had a call back, I called again.

By this stage I was not expecting the best service in the world but was delighted to be able to get through to a very capable agent who was polite, helpful and extremely professional.

I relayed my needs to her and advised that I was still waiting on a call from her Company.

The agent accessed my customer record, confirmed my details etc, but then came back to me and advised that there was no previous correspondence on file regarding my initial enquiry and the planned call back.

Rather than be alarmed I was resolute that it was just all too hard to do business with this Company and they really didn’t want me as a customer.

Cutting another long story short this agent apologised for the lack of service I had received already, answered my questions and did in fact give me some solutions to my problems.

I felt incredibly sorry for her as she was totally let down by her peers and the systems which are meant to support her in her daily dealings with customers. What an environment for anybody to try and work in that is passionate about customer service and willing and able to help customers with their issues.

Call Centre Review steps

12)   Ensure that your agents are always adding and keeping comprehensive notes to your customer’s files to give complete visibility of the nuances of your customer’s transactions.

13)   Ensure that your Quality and Assurance system supports the capture of all relevant transactional data and notes to enforce the importance of this process from the customers perspective.

14)   Ensure that your systems support the commitments that you make in terms of being able to call back within nominated time periods.

15)   If call backs are not able to be achieved within the nominated period then contact the customer and advise that the solution is still being worked on and a resolution will be found within a newly established time period.

But wait there is more!

Customer Feedback Systems

Using Customer Feedback Systems can be a powerful way to develop your business.

However these systems can also; if incorrectly set up, be counterproductive to the intended outcomes.

My situation

Having almost completed the last call I was transferred to a Customer Survey via an IVR system.

The Customer Feedback System asked me a series of questions about my experiences asking me to key in a response to each question.

After answering these the system asked if I would like to leave any other comments regarding my experiences and if so that the system would record my comments.

So I accepted this invitation and started advising the IVR of my issues and concerns.

After a very short period of time (approximately 30 seconds) the system stopped recording my comments and thanked me very much for my time!

To me that just summed up my all of my experiences of dealing with this Company, and did not leave me in a very positive frame of mind at all!

Call Centre Review steps

16)   Test your Customer Feedback System yourself to see if it really is providing your customers with the right opportunities to give constructive feedback and relevant information.

17)   If you’re asking your customers to leave a voice message as part of that process then allow enough time for the customer to explain their issues and don’t allow the system to abruptly stop recording their information halfway through.

18)   Ensure that the data and information captured is properly utilised by the business to advance your provision of service.

19)   Best practice organisations will also ensure that any comments left by a customer will be acknowledged by the business back to the customer via closed loop reporting methodologies.

In Summary

So in a nut shell I highly encourage you to regularly review and test your customer touch point processes and systems to ensure that you are giving your customers a positive customer experience every time they interact with you.

After all happy, engaged customers means more sales,  customer stick ability, happy staff and a win-win situation for everybody!

If you would like help to conduct a comprehensive (or quick) review of you call centre contact me at info@genroe.com.au.  We have a range of call centre performance measurement and benchmarking services that can help you to ensure that you are operating at maximum efficiency.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Call Centre/ Call Center, Customer Loyalty Management Tagged With: ,

7 Steps to documentation success in your next call centre project

August 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

With call centre infrastructure technology changing on an almost daily basis and the need to ensure robust ROI values in all aspects of Call Centre operations, call centres themselves are fast becoming the hub of continual change and project deployment.

Projects in Contact Centres can be dynamic and as varied including:-

1. Call Centre Project Risk

As with all reasonably complex projects, performing a call centre infrastructure implementation needs to be performed with care and good operational planning.   Failure to implement good project management documentation approaches and apply the right subject matter expertise to the project can easily results in delays and cost blow outs.

2. The importance of team communications

I have supported many clients to up a call centre and with call centre infrastructure projects.  One of the first things I do is a health check on their internal formal communication skills.

One of the biggest factors for the success of a project is in terms of ensuring formal forms of communication exist within the business and in particular the Contact Centre environment.

I appreciate that because of the usual pace of Contact Centre life; quite often business communications and interactions may become less formal than usual and not necessarily recorded.

So I suggest to clients that before the start of the project (and for the life of it) they adopt the practice of utilising formal Agendas, Minutes, Task lists, and Issues Logs for all project meetings.

Now this sounds pretty simple and basic but it really is amazing how effective these formal tools can be in ensuring ideas, issues and outcomes are easily communicated, and how they help to keep your project succinctly managed.

So Let’s have a look more closely at some of the type of documents you should be using throughout the lifecycle of every project:-

3. Meeting Agendas

These should be drawn up for every project meeting and include all relevant topics matters that need to be tabled and discussed at the meeting.
The Agenda should also be time lined so that each topic has an allocated amount of time for discussion/resolution so that the meeting is kept on track and all topics are able to be discussed within the time frame.

Agendas should include details of the meeting location, time and date, and the expected participants.

4. Meeting Minutes

Like the Agendas above, Minutes should be created for all project meetings. Minutes should be concise, factual and include all relevant detail pertaining to the discussion of the project meeting.

These should in turn be passed to all participants of the meeting as well as others involved in the project to keep them fully informed of project outcomes as they progress.

Make sure your minutes are dated, detailed and reviewed by participants for content confirmation before dispatch to a wider audience.

I have found minutes from meetings a valuable resource many times over when being asked to clarify specific outcomes or discussions from a project meeting.

In a nut shell they provide a valuable resource for all project participants to review, keep and refer too.

5. Task Lists

Task lists need to be drawn up as a result of meeting outcomes and specific project plan milestones.

Task lists should detail the specific tasks assigned to individuals, as well as the individual/group resource/s that will be working on the task.

A comprehensive task list will also include details of the task start date, the ongoing progress of the task and the task completion.

Task lists are a great way to identify what has to be achieved, who is to achieve the tasks and how much of each task has been achieved.

Task lists are also a great motivational tool which record and visually display what has been achieved over an extended period of time on a project.

6. Issues logs

Every project has at least one issue that can have a bearing on its overall success, so call centre best practice project management dictates that a log of any issues pertaining to a project should be tabled and formally noted in an Issues log.

Once again this sounds simple but amazing the number of times I have been asked to help a client where issues which have been made known to project participants have subsequently flown under the radar.

Either they have been forgotten or not acknowledged, and they tend to rear their heads to the detriment of the project at a later date.

Your issues log should be reviewed and updated on a weekly basis and all details of occurrences that have both a positive and a negative effect on the tabled issues should be included in the update detail.

The task list becomes a fantastic way to keep any issues at the “front of mind” for project Sponsors, Mangers and Stakeholders so they acknowledge that these have to be addressed for the success of the project outcomes.

On the other side, as you work through the issues and find resolution the document once again becomes a tool to show success and provide motivation.

7. Project Plans

Detailed project plans are another key document for the success of your project.

Again my experience has taught me that a lot of clients, even though they may have a formal project plan may not be utilising it to the best advantage.

Quite often it may not be reviewed and updated on a regular basis or indeed may not include all of the required process steps that a business needs to go through to achieve the desired outcomes.

A  project plan which includes all of the relevant project steps, which is accurately time framed, continually updated and reviewed and discussed by all project participants becomes a forceful tool to aid the achievements of results.

Conclusion

So to summarise I can’t recommend highly enough that you should employ some of the old fashioned rigour and business tools of formal communication to aid the success of your Contact Centre Project.

Not only will you quickly realise the benefits for the first project you apply them to but I believe it won’t be long before you utilise the same tools in usual day to day Contact Centre operations to help provide stronger outcomes.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Call Centre/ Call Center Tagged With: ,

Continuous Process Improvement for Call Centers

July 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Continuous Process Improvement is associated to actions a business takes to continually re-evaluate and change any of its processes based on increasing efficiencies of the process, potentially reducing the associated costs and increasing its effectiveness.

A large number of businesses still work with the traditional model in regards to their processes, where they may not change or alter them until reactively needing to do so.

In contrast pro-active businesses are continually challenging current processes and changing them on a dynamic basis to increase effectiveness and efficiencies as well as reduce costs.

In many ways it’s like owning a car.

If you don’t maintain your car, at some point it’s going to break down and will need repairs. Most likely it will break down when you are in traffic, time poor, or unable to afford the repair bills.

However if you constantly maintain the vehicle (at your convenience and when financially able) then it will run smoothly (effectively and efficiently) until you decided to replace or retire it.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work within both models and it’s amazing to see the differences between the two.

One large company who had a procedure for handling customer calls, which had not been reviewed or altered for over 5 years was wondering why customer complaints were increasing and customer satisfaction levels were decreasing.

It became obvious as I worked through the assigned project with them that their stagnant approach was doing a disservice to the customer rather than actually servicing their needs.  A change of script, IVR flow, and some coaching for the CSR’s  saw an immediate increase in satisfaction results and a decrease in complaints.

When invited into the CEO’s office for a wrap of the project he was elated with the results and congratulated me on my efforts.

Rather than accept the thanks I politely asked him when he intended to review the process again?

His response is not really printable here but it was something along the lines of “well its just been done so it should be ok for a fair while now”, that was my cue to give him a quick reminder on the power of continuous improvement initiatives and the benefits it could have on his company.

Thankfully the CEO became a convert and now the Company is gradually turning away from being a reactive process improvement model to becoming a proactive model.

The increased sales and service results are beginning to talk for themselves!

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Call Centre/ Call Center Tagged With: ,

Ensuring Success For Your Next Call Centre Tender Evaluation

July 19, 2010 By 2 Comments

Ensuring success in your next call centre tender evaluation is more than just using good project management techniques.

A few months ago a client called and asked for help.  They were going through the process of tendering for some new technology for their Contact Centre infrastructure.  They approached us for help because the project had come to a bit of a stalemate

The tender process had gone through the usual milestones and the business had already gone to market with a requirements document for new technology.

The client had received the tenders back from the various vendors, engaged the vendors in product presentations, and worked through site visits to see the product in operational mode.

On top of this the client had also compared the most favoured responses.

However the Project team were split 50/ 50 spilt on who should be awarded the business.

They could not decide on one preferred vendor and could therefore not make a recommendation to their Board for final approval of purchase.

I was tasked with reviewing their processes and documentation to ultimately help them decide on the most applicable tender for their business needs.

The process we adopted was to initially review their project plan and tender evaluation documentation as well as interview the project participants to see how they had come to their individual decisions during the tender process.

The client’s Project Plan was strong and had been used as a comprehensive tool.   However the evaluation process they had gone through was not as strong as needed.

The tender evaluation process had no specifically measured “like for like” measures in terms of the individual vendors’ technical systems capabilities and pricing structures.

On top of that when interviewing the project participants it became apparent that some had based their ultimate decision on quite emotive factors.

The strong competence of some the vendors sales representatives had been seen as a strong attribute on which to award the tender.

The actual capabilities of the technology and the best fit for their business had not necessarily been taken into consideration by some of the project team members.

A solution was easily deployed to resolve the client’s problem.

Firstly all of the tenders were revaluated using our proven Call Centre Tender Matrix Comparison Documentation.

Secondly the Pricing components were detailed in the comparison matrix in such a way that like for like were being compared.

Thirdly all participants and scored both the vendor presentations and the associated site inspections on specific criteria appropriate to the business needs which had been re-identified and passed back to the business for ranking.

As the newly defined results started filtering back from the project participants it quickly became clear who were the top two main contenders, and those tenders that didn’t meet the requirements.

When all of the documentation and comparisons had been finalised a formal comparison session was run.  This session had a predetermined outcome set against it: the group had to identify the most appropriate vendor and unanimously agree on a recommendation that could be passed to the board.

In the formal comparison session, the project participants quickly realised that the reworked evaluation matrix identified those areas of the clients’ business requirements that were not provided by some of the vendors, excluding them from further consideration.

The “like for like” pricing comparison quickly and easily identified “hidden” costs and “add on values”, that had not been acknowledged in their previous comparisons.

The revisiting and re-evaluation of the vendor presentations and site inspections via the ranking of specific attributes from each project participant also gave greater clarity as to which tender response was the best fit for the business.

As we went through theses exercises with the project participants they quickly became aware that my logic and the use of specific evaluation documentation quickly took the emotive components of tender evaluation out of the process and instead gave the project participants clear and factual data sets and information on which to base a decision.

All ended on an upbeat note with the project team making a unanimous, informed decision back to their board.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Call Centre/ Call Center Tagged With:

Comcast and Amex invest in Customer Service

June 15, 2010 By 3 Comments

Customer service is  being seen by the big players as a key growth driver according to this recent Wall Street Journal article.

So important is it that the article reports on an Accenture study that shows that 25% of 1,405 companies surveyed will be investing in this crucial area of business before anything else as the economy grows.

Many of the case examples in the article ring true to the basic premise that if you provide superior customer service you will engender superior customer loyalty.  In identifying ways to create a sustainable competitive advantage, service is often a winner.

Great service and service systems are often difficult to copy because, if done right, they can become deeply ingrained in an organisation’s culture.  Over the last few years we have encountered several organisations where service staff dedication to deliver the best customer service comes despite poor company systems and processes.

You just can’t replicate that culture of dedication overnight so it presents a strong customer value differentiation and a good sustainable competitive advantage..

Even Amex staff are being told to look for opportunities for related sales rather than focusing on ending the call as quickly and keeping the average handle time (AHT), and therefore costs, down.  Organisations like Amex are now starting to recognise that service contacts come along much more often than sales contacts can really drive incremental business profitability by using those contacts wisely.

In all of this however you must know which element of the service experience are the most important to customers.  To gather that knowledge you need to have an ongoing process to gather and apply those insights.  Transactional Net promoter Score (NPS) is one such system.  If you haven’t investigated this approach now might be a good time to start.  Before you invest in organisational change.

Customer service is being seen by the big players as a key growth driver according to this recent Wall Street Journal article.

So important is it that the article reports on an Accenture study that shows that 25% of 1405 companies surveyed will be investing in this crucial area of business before anything else as the economy grows.

Many of the case examples in the article ring true to the basic premise that if you provide superior customer service you will engender superior customer loyalty.  In identifying ways to create a sustainable competitive advantage, service is often a winner.

Great service and service systems are often difficult to copy because, if done right, they can become deeply ingrained in an organisation’s culture.  Over the last few years we have encountered several organisations where service staff dedication to deliver the best customer service comes despite poor company systems and processes.

You just can’t replicate that culture of dedication overnight so it presents a strong customer value differentiation and a good sustainable competitive advantage..

Even Amex staff are being told to look for opportunities for related sales rather than focusing on ending the call as quickly and keeping the average handle time (AHT), and therefore costs, down.  Organisations like Amex are now starting to recognise that service contacts come along much more often than sales contacts can really drive incremental business profitability by using those contacts wisely.

In all of this however you must know which element of the service experience are the most important to customers.  To gather that knowledge you need to have an ongoing process to gather and apply those insights.  Transactional Net promoter score (NPS) is one such system.  If you haven’t investigated this approach now might be a good time to start.  Before you start to invest in organisational change.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Case Studies and Statisitics, Customer Strategy Tagged With: ,
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