How well do you look after your customers? Most companies probably think they do a good job, but the addition of technology into large, national call centers has caused many organizations to focus on technology solutions as opposed to people solutions.
1. If your call center uses a feature where a customer can leave a number where they can be reached by the next available customer service representative, turn it off and hire more customer service representatives.
2. A call center manager must rely on technology to track important statistics like the amount of time a customer waits on hold. Any time greater than one minute should be considered to be inadequate. By monitoring these statistics, priority can be given to improving staffing levels.
3. If your first point of contact with your customer is having a recorded message telling them how important their call is, you may want to look at changing the message. If their call was important, it would be immediately answered by a real person - not a computer.
4. If your marketing team suggests that a marketing campagne should be created around a "focus" or "commitment" to customer service, laugh at them and tell them they should take the marketing money allocated for that campagne and spend it on actually improving customer service.
5. Here's a great idea. If your company sends invoices or bills to your customers, reduce the amount of calls to the call center by simplifying the bills. Bills that are too confusing are a leading cause of calls into a busy call center.
6. Make your executives and managers spend a day in the seat of a customer service representative. Give them a good idea of the challenges that are faced by your front-line workers.
Jim Rutherford is the webmaster for http://www.doing-business.info/ and http://www.livingnow.info.
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