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Everyone has a bad call center story. It's as American as baseball and apple pie. In general, it's an industry where competence could be seen as a competitive differentiator. Companies are working to change their efficiency focus to more reflect the call center's impact on the customer relationship, but unfortunately the industry overall still has a long way to go.
Today's lead 1to1 Weekly story gives results of a 10-year study on call centers. And it doesn't give a very good grade to call centers in general. Call abandon rates, due to long hold times, increased during the 10-year period by nearly 127 percent, while the average time to answer a call rose by some 70 percent, from 23 to 39 seconds.
Martha Rogers, Ph.D. says in the article that a short-term efficiency goal is most likely the heart of the problem:
"Using the call center as a quick way to make your quarterly numbers is a stupid thing to do," she says. "Focusing on first-call resolution rather than on length of call increases customer satisfaction scores enormously."
It's not all bad, however. She cites companies like FedEx and Costco that do a good job of keeping customer strategy at the heart of every interaction, whether in-person, on the phone, or online. And as self-service options grow, customers have more avenues to solve their problem.
What do you think? Do you agree that service is on the decline at contact centers? And if you operate a call center, how is the strategy changing to reflect the changing times?
Although most call centers strive for "excellent customer service," most of them lack people who are trained to speak clearly; some lack agents without a heavy foreign accent. I have no negative feelings for someone who speaks English as a second language, except when they are talking to me on the telephone and my brain does not queue in until they are almost ending their comment that I am hearing a form of English that I was not expecting.
Good communication should be at the head of the list when discussing any form of customer service.
I don't think it's there for some companies.
I believe service has improved over the years. Companies are always looking to better the service provided by them, but then there are men, and right there is where the big problem arises. Not everybody has the willingness to perform as is desired in order to make service the best weapon any company might have. What companies have to look for is personnel who really qualifies for the job, and to have some type of premiums for those who have done an excellent job of providing service to the customers--which for any company should be the number one asset they have--so techniques, ways, or whatever you might call it, are present. What most of the time lacks is those who put in practice these techniques in order to make the customer feel like he is walking on top of water without sinking. Of course there are exceptions and always will be, but still it is a long run to acomplish this task.
I have won awards for my customer service skills and as a former call center representative (and former call center supervisor) I feel that call center customer service has declined tremendously. It is disturbing that common courtesy and customer satisfaction have declined. It seems that proper training of customer service reps has become too costly and unfortunately, the customers are the one's who suffer.
There is a Sprint commercial and the CEO of Sprint is talking about how he wants to change Sprint, offers all inclusive services for a set amount. My son has Sprint and has had it for 2 years and as soon as his contract expires, he'll leave. Why? Because if you call in for service, it is an hour ordeal. And then you won't find you are in a US site, rather off-shore somewhere with someone who knows English but not really. He was going to leave the country and wanted to find out what his alternatives were for service and we could not get through or get any help. It was a nightmare. I think one day we decided to just stay on hold and we were on the phone for 2 hours. How would the CEO like to do that? He doesn't need to fix his product offerings, he needs to fix his service, specifically his call center.
The decline is twofold. Time spent on hold waiting for a customer service representative, and quality of service once contact has been made.
The first area usually has to do with staffing, not enough to manage the volume. The second is hiring and training. It seems that the representatives are not versed in the slightest of common manners, and are trained only to the point that they can barely follow procedure. Hang-ups and insults are now the norm rather than an exception.
The majority of these companies need assistance in this area.
I think Anne and Steve are right: it comes down to people and strategy. It's been such an afterthought for such a long time, but there's no reason it needs to stay like that. Call centers seem to be bogged down with process issues, when they really should focus on the people aspect of it all.
I read that Zappo's pays trainees to quit during the training process if they'er not happy, so they don't become long-term drags on customer service. (Read more here). A $1,500 loss now is nothing compared to the value of a long-term customer relationship. If Zappo's can do it, I have hope more companies will follow.
I had to call AT&T over the weekend to help my grandparents set up their new broadband line. After a number of steps didn't fix the problem, the rep asked me to try hooking up something in another room. I told him I was putting down the phone and would be back shortly.
About 30 seconds later when I came back, I could hear the background noise of the call center but no rep. After saying "hello?" a number of times, I hung up figuring someone would call back after seeing the call got disconnected. No one did. I didn't have time to go through the whole IVR process again, so I'll try them again this week.
This morning I received an email survey asking me to rate the experience. Needless to say, I gave them nothing but negative scores with a negative comment at the end. Maybe that will result in some follow-up.
Want to hear an even funnier (read: shockingly incompetent) element about call centers? We recently did a research study of the top 500 Alexa page-ranked sites by sending in a request for assistance via the Web, ostensibly to their call center for help.
Guess how many companies didn't even bother to call back AT ALL (as in zero response to any requests)? Nearly HALF of all of the companies (48 %) didn't even bother. No call. No email. Zilch.
Of the other 52 percent, only 6 percent bothered with an actual phone call.
I agree with your assessment that call centers are a source of pain for many customers, but based on our study, it's almost always the result of a bad management team and poor strategy. The company itself has zero concept of the added value a competent call center adds to their company.
I always believed adn still do, that a vital component to good Customer Satisfaction is the very special 'people' in the process. They make the difference, whatever the defined process may be. Now? Many Companies have driven down cost and in doing so have forgotten how to motivate those people, train and equip them to project that vital 'magic' that is exceptional service.