New Year Resolution tips for your call centre

We are only a week into January and the good intentions have already started to slip.  The cold weather put off that run you were talking about and the diet is already under pressure.Why not plan a new year resolution for your call centre?  We have asked our panel of experts for their ideas.

Ask yourself “what value is the customer getting?”

If you’re wondering why customers make repeat calls after saying they are happy with the way their last call was handled, it could well be because you’re failing to fully understand why they’re calling in the first place. The answer is often to spend more time listening to customers.  A better understanding of the customer’s problem will often improve the ‘value’ of the service you ultimately provide – and could suggest valuable cross- and up-sell opportunities.

Supplied by Steve Norman, Business Development Director, Garlands

Acknowledge your staff

Last year Ann-Marie Stagg wrote about the importance of acknowledging your staff. Professional People doing a Professional job.

In another context acknowledgement is key. That is the field of change management/process improvement.

Your staff are on the front line; they see, know and already deal with your problems every day.  We all like happy customers and service is core to our raison d’etre. So…

When you start your new Lean/Kaizan Six Sigma project, get the staff on board. They know what’s wrong, the bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

Let your existing staff know what’s happening and that it’s being done for their benefit. The first thing that goes through an agent’s head when a nre initiative is suggested will be, “What am I doing wrong?” the second, “My job’s on the line.” Closely followed by, “They’re going to make us work harder”.

Let them know what you’re doing and solicit their feedback.

I’ll guarantee if you bring a few on board, then two thinks will happen:

1)        The staff WILL see it as a more open process and not a witch hunt.
2)        They’ll surprise you with their ideas.

Supplied by David Appleby, Resource Analyst, Healthcare Insurance Company

A few quick-fire ideas

Biggest impact:

• Introduce a wiki for the frontline to help each other
• Start a daily blog with your staff

For your staff:

• Walk the floor every morning for 15 mins and say hello to everyone. Stop and talk to one person per day for 5 min. You’ll be amazed at the effect of being seen to be interested.
• Do a coffee morning with one team for 15 min, once a week
• Set up a graffiti wall and wipe it clean every day, collecting the information and reporting back weekly on what will and won’t get done

For the workplace:

• Clear desk, clear mind policy – get staff to tell you what they can’t do without on their desks. You’ll be surprised

Here’s a few New Year ideas for your metrics:

• Don’t send out the metrics pack and see who shouts when and for what – you could be saving yourself a lot of energy!
• Change just one thing in the metrics each month, to reflect what you’re focusing on
• Every time your boss changes the strategy, insist he/she sits down and changes the metrics to go with it

Supplied by Peter Massey, Budd

Don’t forget YOUR development

Too much of already scarce training budgets is focused on agents.  Yet contact centre managers and support staff, who have key roles to play, receive little or no attention. Development can take the form of formal training, coaching, workshops, webinars, seminars, conferences and networking events. Every day, we meet and talk to contact centre professionals who demonstrate the effect that sharing best practice can have on operational efficiency and the customer experience.  Take the time today to plan your development next year.

Supplied by Steve Woosey, Director, Professional Planning Forum

Take the opportunity to find talented people

“Recessions are full of opportunities as well as threats. In 2009 we will work hard at our day job of efficiency and quality. This is made harder by the constant change and uncertainty which a recession creates. We will also always search for the new opportunities, created by change, to recruit talented people, attract great new customers and purchase new technology at a time when our competitors may be unable to. We will be better after the recession than before it.”

Supplied by Paul Miller, Associate Director – Prolog Contact Centres

Take a good look at the company website

The company website is one of the most powerful customer service tools at your disposal.  If used correctly, web self-service capabilities can support contact centre staff by deflecting inquiries and increasing overall service capacity.   The key is to provide customers with everything they need to resolve common enquiries quickly and easily, and make a smooth transition to assisted service for those customers who need more help.  Investing in usability and guided resolution capabilities is important, because a poorly designed self-service function can actually increase calls to the contact centre.  However, a well-designed self-service capability reduces contact centre traffic by more than 20%, while increasing customer satisfaction and easing the burden on staff.

Supplied by Charlie Isaacs, Chief Customer Officer, KANA Software

Improve customer satisfaction to reduce churn

In the current economic climate, companies need to ensure that they are offering outstanding customer service. In order to do so they need a quantitative and reliable means of measuring their existing service levels. Automated customer satisfaction surveys can be an effective means of achieving this.

With rules in place to determine which callers are offered the survey, and the ability to ensure that agents remain unaware as to which calls are surveyed, these solutions can remove agent bias from the process and ensure more accurate results.

As calls remain in the system while they are being surveyed, an alert can be sent to a supervisor when a customer is dissatisfied, allowing them to jump into the call and achieve first-contact resolution. This offers the contact centre a neat means of proactively increasing customer satisfaction which should be a focus for all contact centre managers in the new year.

Supplied by Dave Paulding, Regional Sales Director, UK and Africa, Interactive Intelligence

Give agents the tools they need to look after customers

With the plethora of choices now available to consumers, companies have an even tougher, more complicated challenge of keeping their existing customers – those that were hard won and expensive to acquire. Yet, in the current economic climate customer retention has to be the non-negotiable prerequisite for continued viability, even survival, of your business.

And the customer service agent is the essential starting point of a chain reaction that will determine how effectively the company will compete, grow or retain revenues, build customer loyalty, and keep existing customers in order to survive.   It is important that these agents are given the tools necessary to enable them to deal with your customers.

Supplied by Guy Tweedale, SVP EMEA Operations, Jacada

Know your team

Take time to find out about each member of your team. Ask them about their hobbies and interests. By building up a relationship with them and treating them as individuals you will get the best out of them.

Supplied by Nemo Loans in Cardiff (Thanks to Ann Marie Stagg for arranging this)

Train staff with diverse skills and qualifications

With the globally tense economic climate having an impact on jobs, it is essential that we endeavour to equip our staff with relevant on-job training that enables them to learn cross-departmental skills and multi-faceted acumen so as to equip them for diverse responsibilities across the organisation.  This can ensure optimum utilisation of our human resources and assist in saving our staffing cost. It is always advantageous for employers to have individuals who are competent to share responsibilities across teams and perform more than just a few essential KRAs.

Supplied by Shaz Rashid, Contact Centre Operations Manager, The Message Pad Limited

Focus on the back office

Organisations will start to look at how they can apply the rigour of call centre process to increase efficiency in the back office. Measuring and regulating back-office activity will allow businesses to ensure that call centre agents are properly supported by swiftly delivering on customer promises building customer satisfaction and loyalty in what’s likely to be a tough year for many of us.

Improve productivity by applying call blending principles to other media

As an industry we’ve been getting to grips with inbound-outbound call blending over recent years, so in 2009 we should turn to blending telephone calls with other media, such as email and text messages. Getting agents to deal with other customer media whilst still being available to handle the immediate demands of telephone calls, will optimise contact centre productivity.

Supplied by Ken Reid from Rostrvm Solutions

Training

Review the training given to front-line customer service and sales agents. Does your training deliver awareness of the brand(s) agents are representing? Does it cover market background for the industry you work in, e.g. competitors, customer profile, market conditions? For training that covers rules and regulations, make sure it includes why the rules exist and what they are designed to achieve.  A little bit of extra knowledge generates employees with buy-in and confidence who are advocates for your company or its clients, the brand(s) and the product. Get it right and service, sales performance and productivity will improve – and the icing on the cake – you’ll reduce your attrition.

Supplied by Janette Coulthard, Marketing & Commercial Director, 2gether Consulting

It’s not just the transaction !!!

Whilst agents should ensure the customer’s transaction is completed, wherever possible, the customer should be made aware of alternatives – additional products and services – so as to build upon the relationship with the customer.

This will add value to the transaction and build rapport

‘Don’t forget – people will buy off people they like and trust’.

Supplied by Nemo Loans in Cardiff (Thanks to Ann Marie Stagg for arranging this)

Get rid of dumb processes

Examine the processes, and their supporting systems, that lead to the majority of calls to the contact centre and resolve to remove any that are plainly dumb (sending out marketing emails without informing the contact centre) or just incorrect (sending out bills with the wrong amounts on them). A good way to find out about these is to ask the agents.

Supplied by Richard Snow, VP and Research Director
Don’t forget that we have lots more call centre tips in the hints and tips section of our website.

Have we missed an idea or are you inspired to bring in a new year’s resolution for your call centre?  Please leave it in the comments box below.