Call Center Attitudes: Customers Speak Out about Call Center Experiences.
In a recent 2006 customer survey, the results highlighted customer attitudes towards call centers and their experiences with them. While some of the findings are consistent with past research, and the “conventional wisdom” and sensational reporting around customer attitudes toward call centers, other results were unexpected and the insights can give savvy operators a competitive advantage.
MIXED SATISFACTION WITH CALL CENTERS
It’s common knowledge that many customers have generally low levels of satisfaction with their call center experiences. In fact, almost 40 percent of respondents stated that they were either dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied when speaking with call center agents. However, a significant minority of almost 30 percent of respondents said they were satisfied or extremely satisfied in their general dealings with call center agents.
A quarter of respondents were neutral in their attitudes. Certainly customer attitudes toward call centers and call center agents are nowhere near as negative as widely reported by the media.
Another leading cause of dissatisfaction with call center service is agent ignorance of the products or services being sold, and therefore inability or delays in resolving issues. Again, half of respondents mentioned this as their leading frustration. Given the availability of embedded solution management systems and knowledge-bases in CRM systems, and problem resolution scripts in call center systems, this should not be as widespread an issue as it currently is.
HOW TO IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Respondents were fairly evenly split on how to improve their interactions with call centers. Slightly more than a third mentioned more knowledgeable agents and correct first-time routing to the right agent to answer their questions. Companies with integrated call center systems should make sure their interactive voice response (IVR) selections are appropriate for the range of needs of their callers, and that their automatic call distribution
(ACD) and skills-based routing are aligned with these, so that calls get correctly routed to the most appropriate pool of agents.
The results suggest that companies that already offer 24x7 customer service and support should feature it as part of their product marketing and messaging, and those companies that do not currently offer such support should investigate affordable ways to deliver this to their customers.
THE ROLE OF SUPERIOR SERVICE IN BRAND LOYALTY
Not only is 24x7 support availability important to customers in their buying decisions, but good customer service in general can increase customers’ own loyalty to their vendors. Over 95% of respondents claimed that a good experience with a call center agent increases their sense of brand loyalty.
With many product categories becoming mature, undifferentiated, price-driven commodities, superior customer service is one of the few areas in which companies still can distinguish themselves in their customers’
and prospects’ eyes.
BAD EXPERIENCES CAN DRIVE CUSTOMERS AWAY
Customers will also change the companies they buy from or forego a purchase based on bad customer service experience. Over two-thirds of respondents said they had done exactly this, one or more times in the past.
Most times the company doing business with them never found out why they lost the sale. Close behind in mentions were shorter wait times and agents having the caller’s history of interactions available. The latter issue can be addressed with a combination of “screen pops” that look up the caller’s phone number, and integration with CRM systems, so that the records for that matching phone number can be presented to the agent at the same time that he or she accepts the incoming call.
24X7 SERVICE OFFERS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Three-quarters of customers said that the availability of 24x7 support was important or very important to them in making their purchase and vendor decisions. This is a surprisingly high number. Customers clearly consider customer service and support to be part of the overall product experience, rather than the “after-market” after-thought that many companies treat it as. Companies should make sure they are taking full advantage of the agent monitoring, call recording, and reporting capabilities of their call center systems in addition to thorough agent training to keep this problem to a minimum.
NOT ALL CUSTOMERS UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU’RE BUSY DURING THE HOLIDAYS
Despite the conventional wisdom that busy holiday shoppers have even less patience than usual, a slight majority of our survey respondents claimed that they were more understanding of delays during busy times.
Fifty-seven percent said they were willing to wait on hold longer during holidays and busy times, though 43 percent said they were not. Despite this somewhat good news, obviously companies should not take customer patience for granted, and should consider adding overflow capacity, either internally or through short-term contracts with outsourcers, during holidays, new product launches, or other peak call volume periods. On-demand call center solutions make it incredibly easy, quick, and inexpensive to add capacity for a short period of time, then revert to normal volumes and license levels during the rest of the year.
HIGHER TOLERANCE FOR WAIT TIME
Customers claimed to be a lot more tolerant of multi-minute wait time than we typically give them credit for. Over 95 percent of respondents said they were willing to wait on hold for more than one minute, and over half said they would wait for more than four minutes. Nevertheless, companies should not convince themselves that they can take advantage of this generosity, and instead should focus on minimizing wait times in order to raise their brand loyalty.
Call center systems can help companies reduce wait times through IVR phone trees, ACD call routing, and skills groups. In addition, the reporting features of a call center system can help supervisors and managers identify peak call periods during the day, and thereby plan their shifts and schedules accordingly.
PROMERO PROFESSIONAL SERVICES CAN HELP
Promero can help call centers get the most out of your Oracle Contact Anywhere solutions to meet your business needs. Promero has a dedicated Professional
Services team with extensive experience in implementing all aspects of the Oracle solution, including ACD, IVR, scripts, campaigns, reports, and skills groups.
Among the most popular services we offer are:
- Network evaluation and recommendations – VoIP telephony place unique demands on your network infrastructure and broadband internet access. Promero Professional Service personnel are experts in solving these issues for each customer.
- Call Center design and deployment - our Professional Services team employees have implemented both inbound and outbound calls centers of all sizes – from Fortune 500/1000 companies to small offices, and from single large call centers to distributed operations with multiple locations and remote agents.
- Supervisor and Admin training – Promero offers specialized classes to train key supervisor and admin employees on how to get the most out of the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere – from customizing, reading,
and viewing reports, to managing a dispersed work group
Press Release from Promero
Promero has recently signed a Channel Partnership arrangement with the company IEX, who is a commercial enterprise and industry leader in workforce management solutions.
In a recent proclamation, on February 20, 2008 Promero, FL (PRWEB) said that in signing the channel partnership and reseller statement with the IEX Company would value add to their standing in the workforce and call centre solution industry.
The IEX Corporation who is a subsidiary company of Nice Systems Ltd (NASDAQ: NICE) and had been providing workforce management solutions in customer administration since 1988. They now has more than 900,000 agents situated in well over 3,100 areas across more than 45 countries utilizing its main company IEX Total View Workforce administration, which specializes in accomplishment management, agent improvement, quality observance and fundamental interaction analytics engineering.
This companies? dedication to providing only the best quality and dominant products in this field on offer to the call centre and consumer care commercial enterprise industry, as a statement from the president of Promero Gregg Troyanowski states, this is further strengthened with the acquisition of IEX and its cortege of its software program offerings. And we are very honored to be attached to this influential and award winning company.
The software packages that Promero are contributing to the market place also includes the IEX Total View Workforce Management package, this also includes, quality observation, fundamental interaction analytics engineering, strategically design and agent improvement, also IEX are coordinated with the Oracle's Contact Anywhere Centre, which is a fundamental part of the whole computer software package.
Promero is the only affiliated partner of this conglomeration that will offer to its customers a truly specific possibility to be able to access amply enabled industry software system throughout its test period. Customers may utilize any application in the collection of Promero's high tech system of commercial activity centres before you make an acquisition of the software package or any of its components. The experience of the trial period is basically the same as having the whole program installed and you can get a very good idea of the usability of the program before you commit to the purchase. Once the trial period has ended you, the client have the opportunity to follow through the method at your place of business or have the ability to use Promero's hosted and well managed services.
This company has joined with some of the most well known world leaders to ascertain and provide only the best in advanced applications in the computer industry. Also allowing access to effectuation, strength, stability, inclusive consultation, and innovation computer engineering. A company founded in 2001, Promero is at the coal face of the application program service provider in internet supported call centre CRM and in the lead of management software programs. They are also a Global Oracle Partner Network Certified Partner and IEX Channel Partner and Authorized Reseller. To find out more about this moving forwards company and leader in its profession go to www.promero.com
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Improving Contact Center Service and Performance
