Call Centers are Starting to Get More Respect

It is wonderful to see call centers  get more respect when it comes to the service they provide.  Much of the work we do is to help call center leaders get others in the organization to appreciate the impact and potential of the call center.   The latest Customer Service Champs issue of Business Week magazine provides some great tips on how to maintain a service focus during challenging times.   There is a lot of focus on call centers and getting the right people doing the right things.  Below is a link to the main article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_09/b4121026559235.htm?chan=magazine+channel_in+depth

Here is a link to an advanced workshop that has been adopted by some of the world’s most celebrated service organizations:  http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/files/Onsite%20Contact%20Center%20Leadership%20Workshop%20Outline.pdf

My friends at Contact Center Pipeline have a great new publication with valuable information for contact center leaders at every level – click here to download a free copy:

http://www.contactcenterpipeline.com/

Opportunity #7 – Refocus efficiencies on reducing volume, NOT handle time.

Many centers focus a lot of energy on reducing agent handle time. There are good things and bad things associated with this measure. If managed correctly, better handle times can result in improved service to all customers and happier agents. However, if poorly managed, the outcomes can have disastrous effects –higher agent turnover, loss of focus, management burnout, customer attrition, etc. By moving your real-time activities from attacking calls in queue to moving closer to the customer, you’ll soon see a reduction in overall call volume. How? When you gather, record, report and centralize customer feedback, you’ll quickly discover that your organization’s errors and inefficiencies are what cause many of the calls to the center in the first place — things like missing information on statements, non-user friendly self-service tools (Web-based and IVR), confusing communications/letters, etc. Armed with critical customer feedback in real-time, you can quickly make changes or adjustments to the things that are causing unnecessary calls into your center. And a reduction in call volume has an even greater impact than an overall reduction in call handle time for a given skill set. 

Impact: A temporary reduction in call volume will have a positive impact on your contact center’s results, but with an ongoing, companywide focus, the improvements grow exponentially. If you transformed your current real-time “queue” management efforts into a disciplined approach to eliminating the unnecessary reasons why customers call, you’ll quickly find the same results without the chaos and headaches of trying to slay the queue.

Get more, including Free web seminars and articles at http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/