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I just had an insight. Maybe it’s so obvious that I should have seen it sooner, but it just dawned on me tonight as I was reading yet another gloomy posting on The 1to1 Blog (seems to be a pattern with them of highlighting the lowlights when it comes to call centers and inviting people to pile on by sharing their sad stories) — if customer service stinks and all that call centers are doing now is not good enough, then the answer must be: NEW TECHNOLOGY!
That’s it! We’d better buy the latest techno-wizgadget (see my earlier post on automated callbacks, “Just Answer the Phone Quicker!”) so we can finally provide good customer service!
What led me to this epiphany? I followed the money, of course. The 1to1 Blog cited an amusing video produced and uploaded to YouTube about a man who so dreads contacting a call center that he would rather clean his house, give the dog a bath, do his taxes, and so on, instead.
Ha, ha, cute, we get the point. Yes, it’s an *original* point: customer service stinks. Read the rest of this entry »
Thought-provoking post from John Quelch on HBR’s blog site, titled “How To Be a Customer.” Here are the five behaviors he cites (read his post for the explanations for each):
Check this website out if you want to see what your customers think of your customer service: http://www.measuredup.com/ They’re making a business out of letting consumers easily rate their customer service experiences, and by consolidating these responses they have the potential to have more influence than isolated complaints (and those already have potency in blogs, YouTube and “I_Hate_Your_Company” websites).
I’ve started hearing more people talking about automated callback technology in glowing terms. That’s when an announcement plays while you are waiting for your call to be answered, offering to have the call center call you back instead of making you wait in the queue. Even my mother likes it (she always tells me what she likes and doesn’t like about call centers she has called, every time we get together). But I admit I have never been that fond of the practice of postponing calls to be handled later, and I further confess that my bias was heavily influenced by a discussion years ago with Jay Minnucci, ICMI’s Vice President of Consulting Services.
So I emailed Jay recently to see if he’s been won over to the automated callback approach. In a word, “no,” but his response is more fun to read than that: Read the rest of this entry »
Fast Company is a fun magazine to read, and always thought-provoking. Their blog entries are worth checking out, too, as you might expect. Here’s an entry that’s pertinent to all of us in the customer service space: Customer, Serve Us
Even though one of the links in the blog goes back to an article from 2001, in many ways the content is timeless, and I recommend you read it (that one is long, I warn you, but worth the time).
There is a huge challenge ahead of us to overcome the negative perceptions of call centers that are rampant in the popular press. Unfortunately, this is not just a public relations issue. There are real problems that need to be addressed, and until the pickings get slimmer, call centers will continue to be ripe for bad press coverage, year after year. call center management
It’s hard to find good news in the press about call centers. But I did read a glowing report in the New York Times about a call center providing terrific service. It’s Crutchfield, catalog and online sellers of audio and video gear, and the coverage was in David Pogue’s newsletter/blog on technology.
Pogue’s account lines up perfectly with what we all should know by now: when you provide great customer service, people spread the word and more business flows to you. No less than 25 people wrote in to Pogue to suggest Crutchfield as the place to turn for a car stereo. And when he took their suggestion, he was blown away by the customer service experience they provided, too. Since he happens to be a NYT columnist, Crutchfield just reaped a wonderful public relations windfall.
Except it’s not really a “windfall,” because they earned their just rewards by providing consistently outstanding customer service year after year. Read the rest of this entry »
You’ve heard it before, I’m sure: customers who have a bad experience tell others about it, so the damage spreads. I found a study quantifying this phenomenon, and you can read about it in “Beware of Dissatisfied Consumers: They Like to Blab” on the Wharton business school’s website.
The study looked at retail customers’ shopping experiences in stores — no call center mentions at all — but it’s pretty easy to see how the findings would apply to callers’ experience with call center customer service. Unhappy customers are unhappy customers, no matter where or how they become unhappy.
There’s a column in Business 2.0 titled, “A Penny Saved, A Customer Spurned” dated Feb. 24, 2006. It’s an opinion piece about the perils of call center outsourcing, and it makes the case that outsourcing frontline customer service is not a good idea. Agree or disagree, but the controversy isn’t going away.
The debate about outsourcing pros and cons has been covered widely (and not always accurately) by the media for a long time now. It’s good fodder, since it has emotion-laden elements, and it’s long-running because it’s complex, without a clear and simple conclusion to be drawn.
But underlying the outsourcing debate is the same perception that we face frequently in the popular press: that most customer service delivered by call centers is not what customers want it to be. Although that’s a “perception issue” and none of us can control “the media,” it really does came back to each of us, who in our own little ways have a say in this. Every little bit adds up. What each one of us does to drive positive and improved customer experiences with the call centers we work with counts. Customers out there are keeping score, and right now we’re losing, but there’s still time to mount a comeback, one caller at a time. call center management
I have had the privilege to participate in the ICMI Membership’s Global Call Center of the Year Award selection process for a number of years now. As applications for the 2006 award start to come in, I find myself thinking about what it takes to win the award.
What makes these call centers winners? At the risk of oversimplifying, there are several qualities that each award-winner has had. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve long been concerned about the disconnect between customer perception of call centers and the rosy reports produced by many call centers about their customers’ satisfaction with their performance. How can so many centers have such satisfied callers while the industry as a whole gets low marks?
Check this website out if you want to see what your customers think of your customer service: 
I’ve started hearing more people talking about automated callback technology in glowing terms. That’s when an announcement plays while you are waiting for your call to be answered, offering to have the call center call you back instead of making you wait in the queue. Even my mother likes it (she always tells me what she likes and doesn’t like about call centers she has called, every time we get together). But I admit I have never been that fond of the practice of postponing calls to be handled later, and I further confess that my bias was heavily influenced by a discussion years ago with 
call center management 
