JoshSweeney

Call your own call center

As a consumer of many products, it always quickly becomes apparent how much a company values it’s existing customers when there is a problem. The standard problem solving strategy always starts with Googling, but sometimes you just can’t find the right search string. At some point the consumer decides to call customer support.

The call center is where most companies absolutely fall flat on their face. The first step is finding the number, sometimes this can be done quickly via the website. Other times you have to go through many layers of pages which try to direct you to a possible solution. This usually ends in clicking the box at the bottom of the screen that says ” this article did not answer my question.” From a business perspective this is understandable. The general public will likely have the same core questions that can be answered with a simple search through the knowledge base. For the more tech savvy customer you will inevitably call support when you can’t find your answer.

Problem one is poorly designed automated phone systems. If a customer has to go through to many levels of keypad menus then they will automatically start to have a bad experience. This will not help the customers feelings when they hit the next issue. Let me take a moment to explain what to many menus consists of. The first way you can tell is if the menu system goes more than three menus deep. If the customer has to listen to all options and pick more than three times then they are likely to start down the path of frustration. Secondly if each level of options contains more than five options then they will quickly tire of listening and remembering. From this analysis one could say that if there are more than 15 total options on the menu system then customers will grow weary. Alternative to dial pads are voice recognition systems. Personally I have not had many problems with these systems. They usually understand what I am saying except for the system I called the other day which prompted this post. If the system does not understand the user more than 2 times during the call then the user should be automatically put into dial menu mode. The phone system should also have metrics on how many times this happens. Using these metrics you can quickly determine if voice recognition is working accurately or not.

Now that we have a full understanding of menu system issues lets look at the second and arguably the biggest problem which is the flow of data. Most of the phone systems used in call centers ask you to input information before you speak with a representative. For call center automation this is a great process. Important data is relayed to representatives before the customer even gets to their phone. The problem with this is that I have only called one company in my life were the data was pulled up before I got to the representative on the other side.  For every other company I have called I was forced to put in information that in no way helped me in the future. I diligently entered and confirmed my information only to be asked for the exact same information again. To further break the flow of information we can add in hard transfers. A hard transfer is when you get transferred to another person who has no knowledge of the conversation that you just had with the first representative. Effectively starting over from scratch and telling them your information for the third time along with a second spewing of your issue. Soft transfers often result in the same problem but generally go a little better. So instead of an 9 on the pain in the butt meter they get an 8.

Last but not least there are the people, the human that is reached that is meant to help fix your issue. I thoroughly understand the business requirement to have this as a tiered system with the most knowledgeable people at the top. The issue that I see most customers run into is the inability for the first tier to understand when the question is beyond their knowledge or when to stray from the script. Many companies make each and every customer go through every step in the script even though the customer may be a pro user of their product. For many products their are gigantic warning signs that tell the representative about the users product knowledge. If the customer knows all the lingo or can tell you the steps in your own script then they probably don’t need to go through it. Or they need to go through it just for a sanity check but very quickly instead of the normal snails pace. In the end, all of this information should be tracked. The knowledge level of the customer, how many times they have called before, and any other data that can make call routing more efficient. As always this of course depends on your product or business. If most calls are one time calls instead of ongoing support then there is no need to log such granular customer information. If in fact these are on going relationships then the system and representatives should have the most granular data possible to give the customer the best possible service. This will give the customer the feeling of personalized service but with call center efficiency.

Calling your own call center is a must. This should be done on a weekly or monthly basis depending on your call centers volume using a fake name so nobody knows who you are . The testing process should start just like a customer. First find the number and then go through the steps marking down all inefficiencies as you go. Since you will be doing this every week you will need to have a grading card that outlines the various areas of the process that you are checking. The true test is to have others do it as well. As an insider you are already aware of to many of the processes to objectively grade the system. This “insider” status will make you more likely to create excuses for why something doesn’t work instead of focusing on the grading the system itself.

Tags: call automation, call center, customer support, ivr, support