The role of customer care in the contact center has never been more pivotal to a company’s success. As a result, contact center leaders continuously strive to develop innovative ways to improve service, increase productivity, and integrate the contact center with the rest of the organization.
No sooner had my story on Dimension Data's 10th annual "Call Center Benchmarking Report" appeared in yesterday's 1to1 Weekly than I received another call center survey -- which, as opposed to the Dimension report, seems to indicate that call center-related satisfaction is improving.
The "Contact Center Satisfaction Index 2008: How Call Center Customer Satisfaction Impacts the Bottom Line," by CFI Group North America CEO Sheri Teodoru and coming out today, finds that call center c-sat gained 3 percent over last year, scoring 72 on the index's 100-point scale. A three-point improvement is admittedly not earth-shaking, but in today's climate it certainly does count for something.
But, not to put too fine a point on it, what?
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.
Forrester Research's 2008 Financial Services Forum, being held this week in New York City, is in part taking a look at how financial service firms measure the quality of the customer experience they provide, and whether or not their approach has been successful. According to Forrester's vice president, principal analyst Bill Doyle, the answer is: not so much.
“If agents can’t solve customers’ problems it’s like throwing gas on a fire.”
That truism was told to me by Marchai Bruchey, CMO of Kana, last week when we were discussing trends in the service arena. Bruchey was talking about the challenge contact centers face with retention. “Companies need consistency in that channel, but call centers have the highest turnover.” One main reason, according to Bruchey, is that agents feel they don’t have the information they need to do their jobs. When agents can't resolve customers’ issues, both customers and agents become frustrated—often to the point of leaving.
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