Call Center Services

More than half of the interaction companies have with their customers takes place over the telephone. For that reason, an organization’s call center represents a focal point for nearly all the activities that take place within the business. It is a place where valuable information about customers’ wants, needs and buying habits is collected. It is also the place where customers receive information and form opinions about the company. For that reason, call center planning and management touches on every part of the organization, and also extends to partners, suppliers and customers.
That’s why building a successful call center operation requires teamwork. The task can be one of the most involved, politically charged and outwardly focused aspects of call center management. Corporate managers, department heads and front-line employees all need to be part of the process for it to be successful.

1) Create A Vision To create a call center vision, the team must take a good look at the organization’s overall objectives. Your team must set measurable call center goals to determine how your call center can meet those objectives. Below are some examples of company goals and possible call center solutions.

2) A Case For Change

Costs of Poor Service

* Escalation of calls and complaints to upper management,

* Repeat calls from customers,

* Callbacks to customers for missing or unclear information,

* Cancellations,

* Handling product returns,

* Unnecessary service calls,

* Negative publicity from angry customers.

* CSRs take the heat for mistakes made by others (increasing turnover),

* Loss of referrals.

Developing a case for change in the call center means putting a number on the value of increased efficiency and enhanced customer service. An important principle in justifying a call center budget is to highlight the tradeoffs. Since there are many variables, it’s useful to create three budgets: one based on targeted service-level and responsetime objectives; another that identifies costs for lower objectives; and a third for higher objectives. These costs will come from the planning that led to your call center objectives.

3) Uncover Customer

Expectations

Successful call centers don’t underestimate the importance of customer input. Even if your company has surveyed customer expectations in the past, an up-todate customer survey is key to assuring that customer service goals and strategies are on target. One of the biggest challenges organizations grapple with is the fact that customers quickly get used to improvements in service, then expect and demand them. Innovative improvements made by your competitors will quickly become a part of the general customer expectations, raising the bar for your - and every other — organization.

4) Bechmark Your Competition

Benchmarking is the process of measuring your products, services and procedures against other organizations. When used properly, benchmarking data can be the ultimate strategic weapon in gaining an edge over the competition. A focused benchmarking effort can help your organization adjust call center forecasting, handling time, service level and customer satisfaction according to customer expectations and current industry standards.

The goal should be to stay one step ahead of the competition at all times. This goal is much more cost-effective than gaining a sudden, dramatic advantage and then allowing the competition to catch up and surpass your efforts.

Many benchmarking reports currently come from professional association, university and government studies. The studies are often as diverse as the organizations that manage and operate call centers. For this reason, it is as important to know how the results were achieved as it is to know the results themselves.

5) Prepare Your Staff

One challenge that automating many call center functions presents is the management of new job roles. Representatives in tomorrow’s call centers must be able to do more than “look up and repeat” information available in a database. They must be able to add value through problem identification and resolution, requiring higher skill levels and analytical abilities. This means taking a good look at your representatives and their talents and abilities - not just at the specific “tasks” of their jobs.

As the roles and responsibilities in your call center change, so must the performance measurements.

Traditionally, the number of calls per hour handled by a call center has been used as a performance marker. Another performance marker that is gaining acceptance in place of calls per hour is “adherence to schedule.” Measured as a percentage, adherence to schedule reflects how much time during a shift an agent is taking calls, or is available to take a call. Adherence to schedule expectations should take into account the many activities that legitimately keep representatives from being available to take a call. Therefore, it should be flexible, according to conditions in your call center. By pairing adherence to schedule with quality-related criteria - like the time required to handle transactions correctly - you can set call center expectations that more accurately reflect your organizational goals.

6) Implement Technologies

To improve the utilization of selfservice applications like IVR, keep the choices as simple as possible. Cluttered, complex IVR scripts frustrate even the most patient customers. Frequently, tasks should be accessible with no more than three menu levels. At the same time, any particular menu should have no more than three choices, resulting in a total of 27 options.

Despite all the careful planning, mapping and scripting your team has executed up front, it is inevitable that somewhere along the line your customers will not think as you expected. For that reason, rigorous application testing is necessary before putting the system online. An outsider, who has had no exposure to all of your careful planning, should have no problems navigating their way to the information they wish to receive.

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