It has become something of a cliché, but why do organisations professing to value their customers insist on providing so-called customer service using the conventional call centre model? One can argue that the one thing almost guaranteed to alienate customers is to force them to engage with a call centre. As might be the case in other fields, could Covid-19 be the catalyst for change, forcing organisations to re-consider their approach?
As with the transition that has been made with employees working from their homes, so the time has come to recognise that the technology exists to enable a major overhaul in the way that remote customer care is managed. Conventional call centres have tended to be associated with long call waiting times, difficult to navigate IVR systems, call queuing technology which cannot cope with routine peak level demand, coupled with low paid, badly trained, transient agents all adds up to an approach that is well past due for a change.
If I am a customer of company X and I am forced to wait on a call, listening to appalling music, intermittently interrupted by pre-recorded announcements telling me that my call is important, but claiming that “our lines are unusually busy” when they are actually just as busy as usual, but not enough agents are available to handle the call load, while the ACD and queueing systems are also unable to handle the calls – then will such an experience endear me to company X? Will I want to remain a customer, or will the experience encourage me to look for an alternative provider for whatever service company X provides?
Call centres were designed to operate within a traditional, rigidly controlled, hierarchical site-based model. They have failed to evolve, while the technology options to deliver customer service have changed significantly. Add to this the trend towards offshoring, as companies sought to squeeze costs out of the customer service model and the result is poor service, poor customer communications and a customer service model that is at odds with any notion of service.
This does not have to be the prevailing condition for the customer service model, but an acknowledgement of the issues, coupled with a change in approach is required. Before I trot out the inevitable digital transformation platitudes, let’s pause and think about what we are trying to achieve with these lumbering and hopelessly out of touch approaches to customer service.
Call centres are now increasingly being referred to as contact centres. The distinction might be subtle, but it does reveal a truth about the process, which is a central place (Freephone number), used by a customer to make contact about some sort of customer service issue – frequently a billing related issue, but also for customers seeking technical support, product support and so on. If the objective is to make contact, then the options need to be extended beyond the phone, towards more of an omni-channel communications mix. This places the phone and the awful IVR experience as one channel, among many others – including Email, Web, SMS, Mobile App, Social Media, ChatApp and so on.
Of course individually these are not panaceas. The use of Chatbots can be significantly more frustrating than trying to interact with an IVR. But the trick is not one or the other, but a blending of different media, to divert as much traffic as possible away from the over-worked agents. Self-Help portals, Mobile Apps, communications via SMS can divert common questions away from agents, leaving the agents free to deal with more complex cases, thus enriching their work and even justifying investment in better training. There’s a lot of work that can be done using digital replacements. The reality is that good systems do exist to provide alternative support channels.
Quite apart from the use of digital tools for customer self-help, is the issue of the way call centres are set-up. The need to concentrate a large number of agents in a single building, often in cramped conditions has been significantly altered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic technology options existed to enable agents to work from home. The idea of complex, on-premise systems has been replaced by cloud contact centre solutions, making it positively beneficial to have agents working from home. If you can access everything you need to manage your job from anywhere, then the options for flexible working become more interesting, both for the agents as well as for the contact centre managers. With a cloud based approach to delivering contact centre technology not only is there no need to maintain expensive infrastructure, but agents can juggle work-life balance better and management can monitor traffic volumes and bring agents online as they are needed. For example extra agents can be brought online during peak load times and then then can go offline to ensure a preferred work-life balance. This flexible working, which might once have been seen as either impossible or a perk, can and should become the new normal for contact centres.
It is to be hoped that if there can be any upside from Covid-19 that it will initiate change in the approach that organisations take to providing customer service. Customer service should no longer be regarded as a race to the bottom, to provide the lowest cost, worst possible service. The technology exists to overhaul customer service, to make it more efficient, and more pleasing. Adoption of these new ways of working might actually result in delivering real customer service and even in delighting customers.