Beyond the phone: helping your front line employees grow

Working in a call center is one of the few jobs that employees with little or no formal secondary education can do, and expect to “rise in the ranks” to an “office job”.

There’s a few career paths your employees could take:

Operations:

The most likely path. From agent to team lead to supervisor, and up the ranks. I’ve seen agents go from answering phones to managing accounts in about 5 years or so. Not bad for those who started with very minimal English language skills and no college degree.

Training:

Another very easy path. Agent to SME to trainer to lead trainer, and up the ranks. For those that would like to expand their skill set, or maybe even travel, this is the way to go. This path could lead all the way up to office jobs such as Instructional Designer or Project Manager.

Specialist:

This is a shorter path, but is a good match for those that might want to leverage years in a certain specialized field into consultation one day.

There are some other paths, but those are the options that I’m most familiar with.

Now, how do you help your employees get there?

Talk to them about their goals

                Where do they see themselves in a year? Do they have any work heroes or people they look up to?

Encourage them to get certified, take classes, and continue their education in and out of work

                Many offices offer professional development classes of some kind or another—these can be valuable when applying for internal jobs.

Coach to their strengths

                Rather than hammering away on a skill set they may leave behind in a year or two, focus on how they can develop long term skills like problem solving, leadership, and innovation.

Develop a good relationship with Human Capital or HR/Recruitment

                Your word will count for something when you want to recommend an employee.

Make your employees aware of these paths

                It’s hard to keep people in your team when they feel the job is a dead end. Make sure they’re aware they have options.

Use these tips and resources to make sure your employees stay with you and stay engaged! 

Top 10 reasons your employees are failing at customer service

Top 10 reasons your employees are providing poor customer services

1: They don’t know how to fix the issue

                This is the number 1 reason issues don’t get fixed. Lack of training, constantly changing policies and offers, consistent turnover that means newbies on the floor every 10 days…and so on.

2: They don’t care about fixing the issue

                It may surprise you (it did me!) to learn that many people work for reasons unrelated to “I want to do a good job and achieve something”. Pocket money, meeting romantic partners, having fun, making friends, or just getting a line on a resume may all be the reason Tootums is more interested in taking long breaks than helping your customers.

3: They aren't empowered to fix the issue

                This really grinds my gears. The company breaths down the vendors’ necks to find out why their NPS score is so low…only to find out that there’s a mandatory 7 minute AHT, after which a manager *must* get on the line, no matter how the call is going. (True story!).

4: They are overwhelmed or intimidated by the customer

                Some customers come on the line like a charging rhino- swearing, yelling, threats, huffing and puffing. For many of your reps, who might be 18 year old-s at their first post school job, this can be very upsetting and scary.

5: They have decided that arguing with the customer is more satisfying than fixing the issue

                This is admittedly rare, but for about 5% of reps (usually those in collections, tech support, or sales), they seem to enjoy arguing with the customer more than fixing the problem. Maybe because it’s a change in their boring daily routine?

6: The client company policy is forcing their hand

                Mandatory Early Termination Fees. Low, low, low bandwidth caps. A limit to refunds. A Byzantine return policy. Why, MegaCorp, why?

7: The vendor company (you!) policy is forcing their hand

                Sometimes the policy of the company that handles the outsourcing is at fault. When you count seconds as “over break”, you tend to alienate your labor force.

8: They are distracted by personal issues

                Breakups, family problems, money issues…you know the drill.

9: They literally don’t have the ability

                Also rare, but sometimes a rep is just…wrong for the job. They’re shy, easily confused, not verbally inclined, or just…not over-blessed with brains.

10: The customer is in the wrong or the issue is un-fixable             

                We've all been there. Sometimes the situation doesn't require customer service, it requires triage and patience. And a coffee break. 

Use these 13 expert tips to improve YOUR teams' customer service performance

1: Track numbers

                Telling someone that they’ve improved by 5% since last week is more powerful than a simple “Good Job, keep it up.” Especially for teams with commissions or bonuses at play.

2: Single people out, but list as many names as you can in your reports and emails.

                Everyone likes to read their name. List the top ten, the best in different categories, the most improved, best newbie—don’t list everyone, but give people a reason to scan your email blasts and reports.

3: “Rip” scripts from the floor and distribute them to your team for use.

                When you hear a great phrase—“I wish I could tell you differently, but unfortunately, that’s the case”—a phrase I heard 3 years ago that I can still remember comes to mind—jot it down and use it!

4: Use pop culture

                Whatever your agents are talking about or enjoying on their breaks—from Candy Crush to Breaking Bad—try to incorporate elements of into your reports, emails, and notes.

5: Talk to your people every day

                Things on the production floor change every day. Attrition, personal dramas, updates and upgrades—your agents often know more than you about the rapidly changing face of C/X in a call center.

6: Know your tech

                Technical issues with tools can be the Moby Dick of your C/X scores and results. Know what tools are helping, which are hindering, and the work-around-s.

7: Understand what customer feedback should be ignored

                Be familiar with the issues of policy or product that cause customers to complain. These are generally unrelated to the quality of service being given. Don’t get caught up in giving a low quality or customer service score to an agent simply because the customer complained. Know why they complained.

8: Give your team the benefit of the doubt

                When you first hear some of the things agents say you’ll want to shake them. Over time, however, when you get to know your team, you’ll understand that most of the time they’re really doing their best—they just don’t have the skills or tools to do so. They’ll respond much better to your advice and coaching if you come from a place of generosity.

9: Customize training and feedback

                Use the agent’s name in your comments, track their progress, and give them tips based on their particular strengths and weaknesses. Avoid using empty slogans and ‘value statements’.

10: Offer tips and tricks every day

                Agents often get bombarded with updates from corporate and other emails. Keep a file of quick and easy tips to share every day to stay current and to avoid having your emails pushed to the bottom of the stack by a ton of “Organizational Announcements.”

11: Use SharePoint, Chatter, Yammer, or other enterprise social media

                The fun (sort of) of Facebook or other collaborative sites,  in a contained environment.

12: Use data to find your bell curve of performance

                Know your team. Who’s performing where? Who should you focus on? Who’s your priority?

13: Catch people doing it right

                This is one of the most powerful pieces of advice I was ever given. A thumbs up, a literal pat on the back, a piece of candy slipped onto a desk with a whispered “Great Job”, an extended break after a big sale or extra hard call—all these go a long way to getting the performance you want. Remember: what you focus on, you get more of. 

Are you getting the most out of your up-sell efforts? How to up-grade the up-sell!

While I have you on the phone….A few quick upgrades to help your reps up-sell.

The temperature of the phone call should be warm, not hot.

It seems to be just common sense that your reps shouldn’t be trying to sell upgrades to irate customers, especially those whose issue did not get resolved. However, some companies, for reasons lost to time, have policies in place that require an up-sell attempt on every phone call. If this is the case, we’ll give you a few tips to handle that.

If your reps are allowed to make a judgment call as to who they offer up-sold products to, advise them to offer to neutral customers, customers whose issue was resolved during the call, or happy customers.

The up-sell should match a stated or implied need.

These needs could be in the form of a comment about the product, issues the customer is trying to resolve unrelated to the product (for example, the fact that the cable company won’t string cable to their location could be an opening to up-sell a satellite TV package), or connections you build with the customer (for example, you and the customer commiserate over high interest rates on your car note. Wouldn’t it be nice to get an annotated credit report every month showing you any risk areas?)

The up-sell should (ideally) seem like a friend offering advice or suggestions.

“You know what, Mr. Smith? While I have you on the line, I’d like to let you know about our MaxBuster 2000. You mentioned at the start of this call that rats have chewed through your phone line and you’ve had to call the exterminator 3 times this year. We actually have a subsidiary line of pest control products, and for a small extra charge we’ll have one of our Ratz-no-more professionals come to your house and deploy the product. No muss, no fuss! So, shall we get that set up for you today?”

The up-sell should be part of the *entire* phone call, not Frankenstein-ed on at the very end.

Have your reps build rapport, take note of stated and implied needs, and maybe even hint or allude to the up-sell product before the big end of chat alter call. One of the biggest challenges to overcome with customers is that the up-sell seems so different in tone and delivery than the rest of the call. Your reps are setting themselves up for a “no” when they switch from light and friendly “service consultants” to bitter robots determined to get through the “no” and onto the next failure. Make sure that the set-up moments are sprinkled evenly through the call.

What if your client requires an up-sell attempt on every phone call? (Or has other shot-in-the-foot restrictions?)

If it’s possible, write the reps a script that alludes to this. “Before I finish up today, we’re offering all of our customers our new MegaTornado Insurance Coverage. I know things didn’t go quite as planned on our call, but since this is a great deal, I wanted to make sure you had a chance to take advantage of it.”

Acknowledge that the call wasn’t ideal, that “all” of the customers are getting the offer, and that you’re offering them a deal/value/exciting product. Explain in a few words why you’re making the offer, perhaps even saying something like “Our company wants to ensure all of our customers get a chance to take advantage of this one time opportunity to get 2 Exercise Chairs for the price of 1. Is that something you might be interested in?”

With these few tips, your reps could be well on their way to more effective up-selling in no time.

Blitzed! 5 top tips for offshore employees dealing with US Holiday season.

It's coming....something twinkly this way walks!

They're running on the fumes of a candy cane frappachino.  They're trying to talk over the shrieks of visiting nieces and nephews,  and juggling tape, scissors, catalogs, and ornaments with one hand while writing their Christmas letter with the other: this customer is fragile. Handle with care!

Here's a few tips to help them handle the madness.

1: Tailor your materials to the "high middle" level of rep awareness.

My previous company put out company- wide communiques about Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving (yes, they missed a few holidays, but hey, they tried!). They included background, traditions, and greetings, as well as fun trivia.

They were geared towards the "intermediate" level, which I think was the right choice. Most agents are familiar with the basic idea of US Holidays-- they may have seen music videos, movies, or read magazines and books with these holidays featured. Some countries either celebrate the same holiday or have a version of it, so this raises awareness as well. Don't bore your audience with basic stuff-- at the risk of having them ignore it!

2: Give your reps an idea of what the customer (probably) loves about the holiday.

For Thanksgiving, it's all about the food and the football game. For Christmas, it's all about the big family gathering, the "loot" and the lights. New Year's is all about a resolution that everyone knows you'll break. If you give your reps a few quick talking points and sound bites, they'll make a much stronger connection to your holiday-season callers than with a tepid "Happy Holidays".

3: Go beyond the warnings about stress to the reason that the stress is happening.

Explain the pressures of travel, the expectations that those [expletive deleted] commercials set, the stress of seeing family members that were otherwise avoided all year, and so on. Try to bridge these to common experiences in your reps' lives, if you can.

4: Anticipate and adjust your top call drivers, and create training around these.

Quality and Operations may have done this already, but it's up to you to make sure your reps are prepped for the onslaught of returns, lost packages, and frantic orders that they'll face, especially if they're seasonal ramp employees.

5: Create a  training package for each holiday, with top call drivers, information about the holiday, sound bites, etc.

If you're off duty, traveling, handling the 50- people- just- quit -crisis, or just otherwise engaged, it's a smart move to have a place where you employees can go to get the information they need about the holiday. SharePoint, Chatter, Yammer, or other Enterprise Social Media/LMS is a great place to store this stuff.

And don't forget the reason for the season... Sharing photos, foods, or stories with your reps can help them "get it" much quicker and bettter than any Power Point presentation, no matter how awesome the graphic are.

Now get out there and start spreading some holiday cheer!

These guys are good! Check out the Part II of the Buffer saga!

Socks remain blown off! These guys are so good.

 

I have already shared the very well written email I got from Buffer with you. Now for Part II, in which I evaluate their follow up email.
And class, I don’t even use Buffer! I signed up but quickly realized that I don’t cache enough content or have enough tweets to make it worthwhile…at this time. But you bet your bippy when I do I’ll not only use it but recommend it to friends!

The email:

Hi there,
I wanted to follow up with you after yesterday's hacking incident. For many of you this has seriously disrupted your weekend - I'm sorry we caused that awful experience. The Buffer team has been working around the clock and I'm glad to say we're back up and running. We have also spent all of today adding several security measures.
There's one key step to using Buffer again: You will have to reconnect all your Twitter accounts, even if you've already done so. Go to the Buffer web dashboard to reconnect.
Other important things for you to know:

·  Reconnecting won't work in mobile apps, all Twitter accounts will have to be reconnected on the web dashboard.

·  Your Facebook posting will have resumed normally, there is nothing you need to do.

·  Signing in with or connecting a new Twitter account in the iPhone app won't work until our new update is approved by Apple.

I want to apologize again and say that I'm incredibly sorry this has affected you and in many cases also your company. We've written a blog post with ongoing updates as we uncover the full details.

What is left for us right now is to complete our technical analysis and take further security measures. We will follow up with another update on this soon.
I want to invite you again to hit reply to this email or post a comment on our blog post. We will be sure to respond to you as fast as we can.

- Joel and the Buffer team

I’ll once again quickly detail the things the team has done right:

1: Writing a follow up email at all! This shows they are serious, they care, and they’ve taken the time to communicate with their customers.
 
2: Empathy with a specific understanding of what it may have cost the customer—time, convenience, trust in the company. Understanding what you have cost the customer is key in crafting a sincere, believable and effective apology.

3: concrete steps showing what you’re now doing differently, in this case “adding several security measures”

4: Using formatting to emphasize points- bolding, spacing and bullets are all used very well here

5: Again, the apology “sandwich”—apology, steps taken, apology. Good move.

6: What’s next/ what can the customer expect? After something goes wrong and you’ve fixed it, there is still a dangling thread that some companies miss- what’s next. It’s also smart to move the customer “past” the unfortunate event and to looking to the future. These guys are good!

7: Offers (with links!) to communicate. So many times I’ve searched in vain on a bill for a web address, phone number, or any way to get in touch with the behemoth company who’s issuing commands at me. It’s nice to see a sincere attempt to communicate.

 

All around good show!

 

Unfixable: the most challenging obstacle I ever encountered in my call center days

If you’ve ever called an offshore call center that sounds like a busy street market, ringing with the sounds of a foreign language, you can bet your Tuesday lunch there is a tight lipped ex-pat in the background, making throat-slashing gestures at the offenders in vain.

3 and a half years ago, I landed in the Philippines in a semi-provincial area to work in a call center creating training materials, coaching, and training front line reps on communications, soft skills, and language. The job was extremely challenging, the support pretty nonexistent, and the hours were hell. My desk was in the middle of the production floor, an area we semi-affectionately called “the Dungeon”. All of these challenges paled in comparison to the looming obelisk that blotted out the sun: EOP.

EOP was the acronym for “English Only Policy”. It makes sense to ask and require reps to speak only English at work and on the production floor. What was next to impossible was getting them to do it.

I tried email reminders. I tried bribes. I tried “catching people doing the right thing.” We created slogans and had a contest. We printed tee shirts. I created a campaign of emails with illustrations (beloved, yet completely lacking in impact) called “EOP Stars” which featured people of Filipino extraction or origin who made their careers on English—people like Bruno Mars, Apple d.App, and Josie Natori.

 The communications team as a whole tried meetings -one of which was held with the entire 200 person production team- where I held up ominous bar graphs showing a decline in our customer satisfaction score with an increase in our floor size (meaning our floor walkers couldn’t physically get to all of our agents and remind them to zip it). We tried threats, keeping score, and as a last resort, embarrassing the offenders in front of everyone.  We created reminders called “Background noise K.O.” that explained we would grade any call in which background noise was captured a “0” in Quality. We wrote people up and reported offenders to the powers that be.

Nothing could budge people from their desire to speak in what we (wrongly) called “vernacular” no. matter.what.

I spent a HUGE amount of time trying to understand this. English is the accepted language of worldwide business, most likely closely followed by French, Chinese languages, Hindi, and Arabic. Filipino (and the local dialects) doesn’t even make the top ten! For ambitious young professionals, accent- free or “neutral” English was a marker of success and class. So why were our reps so resistant to speaking in English?

After more than 3 years living with and working with Filipinos, I have only guesses.

 My first guess would be the intense, almost maniacal national pride that Filipinos have for their people and heritage. With few natural resources, a history of occupation and struggles, and widespread poverty, national pride in the people themselves as a kind of living museum is a must. Tee shirts with the slogan “The Filipino is worth dying for”/ “100% Filipino” and other such lines that celebrate the people of the islands (rather than, say amber waves of grain, or purple mountains majesty) were very popular. Language is a part of culture and heritage, which I (humbly) submit was ignored or bulldozed for many years (first by the Spanish, then by the Americans, now by the business world at large).

My second guess is that it’s a combination of a) never really finding the right motivator and b) the transient nature of front line call center work means that the talent pool tends to be young, carefree, and not super serious. Having fun with friends and finding romance were reasons people came to work, rather than “career advancement” or “financial independence.”

My third guess hinges on something that I will most likely never understand fully: culture. The bonds of interdependence and connection between family and friends are so tightly woven that for some, speaking English instead of the local dialect feels like a kind of betrayal, a kind of show of arrogance. And when it came time to choose between a seatmate who loaned them money, showed them sympathy when they were down, hooked them up with a cutie they knew, and was just generally there for them and speaking English: no contest. Speaking English could at best mark you as an upstart, at worst get you a freeze out. The “cool kids” in the account actually put on a heavy accent to speak English, and you can imagine the trickle-down effect this kind of thing had!

I left that town never really knowing what I could have done to make a lasting difference, and wondering if maybe the initiative itself was somehow beside the point. Was EOP just another misguided effort to standardize something that should not be standardized—akin to what happened to the U.S’s indigenous peoples in the 1800’s? Or was it really ‘for their own good’?

I leave it to you to ponder.

 

The biggest mistake your agents are making in bill explanation: the Memento problem.

For almost all major companies who outsource customer service, “Bill explanation” in one form or another is a top call driver to their centers. (For those that just want to know where Memento comes into play, see #4).

How do you get this pivotal service right?

1.       Listen very carefully to the customer and ask questions

There are generally only a few reasons the customer needs their bill explained: unexpected charge, or first bill, or new customer on an existing account (i.e., hubby calls in to make a payment when it’s usually wife’s job, or vice versa). Your reps will answer the same questions over and over. For most bills, I would say about 75%, a standard scripted explanation will be sufficient.

However, the remaining 25% will age you before your time and make you face your own mortality, because they are so challenging to understand, let alone script.

This is why it’s key to listen to all the information coming from the customer, ask targeted questions (list below) and  pay attention to what the customer says at all stages of the game.

 Generally, customers are the worst source of information about their own account—I mean, they’re calling you for information, right? If they knew, they wouldn’t be on the phone with you! But in the case of the double bill, the missing bill, or the bill that keeps coming in the wrong name, they usually have valuable information.

-        Targeted questions to ask (nicely!!!)

o   Have you had this issue before? If so, and if it was resolved, what was the resolution?

o   When did you first notice this issue?

o   What is the outcome that you would like to see here? (This may help with people who rant, ask questions, rant, go on a tangent, and then rant some more.)

o   Before I explain this, would you like me to refer you to our Self Help page (or other resources they could use to resolve the issues alone)?

 

2.       Use active listening to paraphrase the concern before commencing with the explanation

With outsourced agents who speak English as a second language, it’s a fact that nuances can be missed. With billing questions, especially tangled events like a promise for a % off that never happened, it’s very important to double check with the customer before “solving” the issue.

-        Paraphrase1: “So, you’re seeing a charge for $41.95 over and above your normal charge of $21.99, and you’re wondering what happened there?”

-        Paraphrase after catching the miss from paraphrase 1: “Oh, your entire bill is $41.95. Okay, so there’s an additional $19.96 that we need to find somewhere.”

 

3.       Match the speed, pacing, and comprehension level of your customer

I’m sure I don’t need to explain this advice in detail, but let me fill it out a bit by suggesting how you can determine the comprehension level of your customer.

-        Vocabulary. One of the easiest ways to determine the “reading level” of your customer- do they use industry jargon (such as “billing cycle”)? Do they seem familiar with billing practices at all? (It happens that we do get callers who’ve never seen an e-bill or even a checkbook!)

-        Question frequency- are they asking a lot of questions or are they just giving you verbal nods? A lot of questions usually means they aren’t following your level of conversation and it’s time to take it down a notch.

-        Type of question- pointed or targeted, or “huh? What?”

-        Verbalizations other than full words. “Uh, eh, oooh, mmm” etc. Listen to these to tell if the customer is understanding you or is lost

-        Total silence. You’ve usually lost them.

-        The structure of their explanation upon calling:

o   Example A (low structure): “Uh, yeah, um, about my bill? Okay, what happened is, I signed up for $29.99. And that was like, last year, or whatever. And now I’m seeing, I dunno, about $60.00 or something! So, uh, yeah.”

o   Example B (high structure): “Hi, Lorinda, you can help me by telling me what this charge is in the amount of $61.97 on my bill of June 1. My account number is…”

 

4.       Explain it as if you were telling a story: beginning, middle& end.

This is the biggest single mistake agents make: they start with the issue, not with the origin of the issue. Factoring in challenges with grammar and sometimes cultural expectations (“Don’t give bad or upsetting news directly, it’s better to talk around the issue and let the listener draw their own conclusions.”) and you have a vague, muddled, hard-to-understand bill explanation.

Most agents start with “Okay, so if we take 295 and minus out this month’s bill for 49.95, we have 250 dollars, right? So then we go back to August, and we see that there is a charge for 25.99, right? Okay, well that is 10% of 250 dollars.” WHERE DID THE 250 come from???

It is VERY HARD to think backwards for most people. It’s like watching the film Memento. Memento is a really cool film, but its limited audience and cult status are in place for a reason: it’s a brain buster.

Don’t try to challenge the intellect of your customers by making them think in reverse. Tell the story in the order that it happened, *starting with the origin of the issue*.

-        The steps in telling your bill story:

o   The precipitating event- the domino effect-the current state:

 “Okay, back on July 7, we were expecting to receive your old cable box. That was the end of the 30 day cable box receipt grace period. Since we did not receive the old cable box, a charge for 259.00 was generated. (The precipitating event) This charge then appeared on your August bill. Since you mentioned that you sent in a check from your vacation home for the usual amount of your bill, the additional 259.00 did not get paid in that cycle, leading to a finance charge of 10%, of 25.99. (The domino effect) So your September bill is now…” (The current state).

 

5.       Follow up with a test close and actually answer any concerns that you receive

After you’ve explained the source of the questioned items on the bill, (or solved whatever other concerns they may have), make sure that you ask “Is there anything else we could help you with today?” Sometimes customers don’t want to interrupt a very clearly earnest and trying very hard agent, but they couldn’t capture the explanation. This is their chance to ask again, or ask for more information. It’s also your last chance to have First Call Resolution, or to ensure that they won’t call back a few hours later on the same issue, because you didn’t really explain it well the first time.

6.       Guide them to resources where they can find answers on their own or through a community if they would like

Personally, I would suggest doing this after a good, solid “solve” and really at no other time—not before, not after a half assed solve, and certainly not after a no-solve! (Unless company mandates it, in which case….all I can do is shake my head). After a solid solve has been achieved, the customer is in the glow of happiness—you fixed their problem!

Now is the time to offer the vaunted value- add! Now is the time to ask them to “join the conversation” at #cablebillsmakemetingleinside. Now is the time to gently ease that baby bird of a customer out of the nest of the call center and into the welcoming arms of the community! Fly, baby customer! Fly!

You're doing it wrong: call centers.

Source: http://bjoernvold.com/

 

Recently, a viral video recording of a customer service call gone terribly wrong made the rounds of the Internet.

http://gawker.com/youve-never-heard-a-customer-service-call-meltdown-qui-1299857467

When it was posted on Gawker, comments ranged from sympathy with the poor agent to agreement with the caller.

I enjoy reading comment sections, and since my profession and interest is call center training, I read through almost all the comments for this article. There were 2 that really stuck out in my mind:

1: "It's not surprising that customers snap and have meltdowns like this — the way they treat you, I feel dread when I have to call any of the big companies. Transferred five times, on hold for 45 minutes, and suddenly I'm back at the starting point, forced to endure the whole recording urging me to use their website instead + the "speak your account number" system that never, ever understands me. I've been brought to tears by customer service — notably, AT&. […] Melting down accomplishes nothing. If you can connect with them, they might hook you up. Then when it's all over, three hours later, you can let out the tears."

2: "He didn't handle it admirably, but I have sympathy for the guy who lost his mind. It happened to me once when I tried to cancel my automatic payment with Sprint. After being disconnected at least 10 times, and being on the phone for 2 1/2 hours, I got a person who told me Sprint couldn't do that. I had to contact my bank to stop the payment. Something broke inside of me that day, my friends. I was actually crying with despair. […]"

(comments from Gawker.com)

Where did we go wrong? Why, with all the technological updates, customer experience blogs and experts, and mature call center staff,even overseas, are we still reducing our customers to quivering balls of tears?

It genuinely saddens me to read lines like “Something broke inside of me that day” and angers me to think that companies have the nerve to call experiences like the 2 above ‘service’ of any kind.

What are the issues identified by these comments?

1: It’s very clear that people HATE the IVR auto options, yet companies keep tinkering with them to make them “better”. My bank has a speech recognition system that asks me to speak my account number and PIN. Uh, bank? Has it ever occurred to you that I might not want to speak confidential information like that aloud?

We need to make the IVR better at recognizing speech, but we also need to offer a clear option for “human” in the *first* set of options, not after a Keystone- Kops- like chase through the phone tree from hell.

2: Lack of communication between platforms. The IVR doesn’t take notes. Department A doesn’t know what Department B does, nor do they care. Chat queues aren’t connected to voice queues, and can’t see any of the notes on the account from previous calls.

 This was one of the most common headaches I encountered in my call center production floor days. Nothing is more annoying to customers than having to repeat all the information they just gave “the robot lady”, and yet many companies still do not integrate their IVR and their CRM (or they don’t fix the issues with accounts that don’t “screen pop”).

3: Lack of awareness of common customer service requests. Stopping an auto pay should not take 2.5 hours and ten phone calls. Customers should not be “letting the tears out” after routine concerns like getting a new phone number, tracking down a missing bill, etc. Either major corporations are not aware of the top call drivers and don’t train to them, or they don’t care. Not sure which option is more chilling.

4: Understaffed and under trained call centers-. Yes, everyone is excited about the new social learning engine that will allow “the swarm” to collaborate on the customers’ issues. But that technology is still in its infancy and in the meantime, 3 hours-in-total calls, dropped calls, no supervisors, long holds….they’re clearly still an issue. We need more training, more supervisors, and more agents, plus better, more flexible staffing.

5: Lack of connection between the high level decision makers and the front liners. Just ONCE I would like to see the CTO or CFO of a megacorp take an irate phone call. Some of the corporate communiqués I’ve received are so out- of- touch as to be almost funny. “Customers will love our new Self Service option- it will save them time and money!” Yeah. Something like that. Only not at all.

 I’ve also worked with a company (that shall remain nameless) that insisted that all the product and service issues be dealt with by using “better scripting and delivery”. Hon, there’s no good way to explain charging 60 dollars a month for download speeds of 3.0 Mbps, with a cap of 200 MB okay? There just isn’t.

I think it’s clear that companies have a duty and a responsibility to step up to the plate and start getting serious about the quality of their call centers. I understand that customers sometimes don’t get it that if they want 30$ Internet, the cost cutting has got to start from somewhere, but I believe we can avoid the blatant “We don’t care about you” mistakes.

 

Let’s all step up our game.

Only connect: customer experience as customer caring

source: folsol.blogspot.com

 

I could write a book about how bad call centers, especially outsourced call centers, are.

Instead, I would like to share what I have learned about customer care in the Philippines frommy own 2+ years in outsourced call centers, in a positive way.

The customer’s experience in the Philippines is very different from the US—in some terrifying ways (which I will cover another time) and in some surprisingly pleasant ways.

Advice to a stranger.

Because of the cultural edict to help and serve others above themselves, most Filipinos will break themselves in half trying to help you, even if you are a stranger. Yes, it could be annoying to have strangers tell me how to do something, but it could also be helpful. I think about the commercials in which strangers in the US helping each other is portrayed as Mother Teresa level sainthood and a real novelty, and I have to say that we could probably use a bit more of this.

Translation to best practices in the contact center:

Encourage your reps to anticipate potential issues that other customers have suffered, and warn the current customer about them.

Have other customers experienced slow uploading when they chose this package, and wound up upgrading a month later? It might be worth your while to mention it.

Have other customers signed up for the monthly text message reminding them that their payment will be taken out of their checking account the next day, and they loved it? Again, might be worth mentioning.

It all comes around.

If I asked my driver to wait, he gets a tip. When I asked my tailor to complete a rush project for me, she got not only my business, but the business of my wealthy, idle ladies- who- lunch friends.

In the reverse, I lived in a service apartment, with a maid service for a year. In that year, I must have given the maids almost 100 books (paperbacks that I intended to read only once), and just as many DVDs (cheapies that I bought to watch once, on a whim, or got one episode into and didn’t like).

When I was in terrible pain and couldn’t walk one night to get medicine, the maids came up to the room, got the money, and went to the store to get medicine for me. That was great "instant karma" for my good deeds.

Translation to best practices in the contact center:

Many times it can feel like an ER in the production floor: you help a frantic customer out and never really know the ending of the story—what happened? Did the patch work?

I would try to develop a practice of ‘catching them in the act of doing good’—when you audit calls, note the highlights and good deeds, not just the grammar mistakes.

 When you hear an agent struggling with a cranky customer, give them a thumbs up, an extra few minutes on break, or a much needed coffee for free. Make sure they get “instant karma” for doing the right thing and helping others.

Whatever you call it, customer service, care, or experience should be about making the customer’s life easier.

There were many times in the Philippines where life was much harder than in the US—getting a new ATM card was a Himalayan outing. However, there were many things that made life much easier—little mini shops that sold OTC medicines by the pill, so that if you were short on cash you could buy just as much medicine as you needed, and not be stuck buying the whole $10.00 bottle, as I was the other day in the Detroit airport when I had a headache and needed relief, fast. Shoe repair shops inside the grocery store, so that you could drop off your shoes and go shopping in one errand. A huge variety of public transportation choices: light rail, dollar vans, cabs, buses, and mini buses (“Jeepneys”) as well as private cars with drivers, and rickshaw-like contraptions for short trips when you were just too tired to keep walking. 

 It was all about variety and convenience.

Translation to call center best practices:

If it’s at all possible, offer choices to your customers. Try to make those choices genuinely different, and genuinely appealing. Letting the customer know they can use UPS OR FedEx to mail back their broken modem at their own expense really isn’t much of a choice, now is it? Coach your agents to try to offer choices, workarounds, or ‘hacks’ whenever they can, to make life genuinely easier for the customer.

Look around you in your own life: what connections do you make that you can bring to the customer experience?