When Will Contact Centers Be Taken Seriously?
We at 1to1 are always looking for the newest trends, best practice examples, and high-level customer processes and strategies to share with our readers to help improve the experiences they create with their own customers. While attending IQPC's Call Center Summit in Coral Gables, FL., yesterday, I noticed another trend. That is that contact center executives across a variety of industries still struggle with balancing employee and customer needs with executive mandates.
I sat at lunch with call center leaders from nine organizations ranging from Putnam Investments, to First Citizens Bank, and AAA. While they convened to discuss ways to drive and measure performance to improve the customer experience, they still all struggle with similar challenges--how to move from being considered a cost center to being recognized by executives as the most valuable resource in the organization.
They have a long road ahead, from what I gathered. Kara from Lockhead Federal Credit, for example, said that she's trying to meet executives' demands for answering the phone quickly, but with fewer agents.
Tami from Putnam Investments said that reports are so cumbersome that she's faced with analysis paralysis, not to mention the agents have to sift through multiple applications that live on their desktops. She said the company is definitely ready for some slick tools.
And a representative at Henry Schein, a provider of medical supplies, said that her team has no way of knowing why customers leave the company.
While their challenges differed somewhat, they all agreed on a few things: Their executives have no clear accountability in place, there's a total lack of integraiton with marketing and any other part of the enterprise for that matter, they're confused about which metrics are important for measuring performance, they have no standard operating and protocol procedures in place, they have little support from senior management, operate under confusing and nonsensical reporting structures, and are required by executives to place far too much emphasis on average handle times.
Then there are also challenges that seem not as important as these higher level issues, but are still critical to employee productivity. Letting agents stand, for example (I was surprised to find that spurred a heated conversation). I learned the policy generally stems from preventing conversations from bellowing and distracting other agents. Also, a couple companies recently switched to wireless headsets so as not to make agents feel tethered to their desks. Now they can get coffee or go into a supervisor's office while on the phone with a customer (it took this long?). However, the CEO at one of those companies approved the headsets without confirming the decision with the COO, who oversees the contact center, so the COO is now up in arms, and the future of the headsets hangs in the balance.
While these revelations surprised me, one thing remained constant: These call center leaders are deperate for answers, are craving new processes and technologies, and they care about meeting the needs of their employees and customers.
One of them admitted that her organization's executives are only required to listen in on calls in the contact center for one hour every year. Too bad they weren't listening in on our lunch.
You're right Dan. Many companies have no process for collecting, tracking, and following up on consumer feedback.
Peg Rapos, vice president and director of the voice of the customer initiative at Wachovia Direct Access, says her organization actually employs a group that conducts statistical analysis on customer calls and then scores them based on call type. As a result, the company leverages the data to drive behavioral change among its agents and to drive policy and process improvements. The group also circles back to measure how a particular process is working after it's implemented.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with the call center director for one of our clients. Part of a Fortune 100 company, his center actually tracked more positive communication than complaints. Consumers were calling for product information, to learn about how to participate in marketing programs, and to ask for brand extension SKUs to be distributed in their community.
Because there was no owner of positive relationships in the marketing hierarchy, only a "shame" list of top complaints, the company had no way to act on the desire of brand loyalists to be marketed to.
The idea of a generally accepted ROC (Return on Customer relationship) metric is long overdue to demonstrate clearly the opportunities and failures to the organization related to the call center experience.