CALL CENTRE OVERLOAD - A CAUTIONARY TALE

Good morning

In my previous corporate life, I was responsible for strategic customer-centric business service quality. One of these was putting in place strategic business plans for testing services which included making use of or the development of technologies to enhance service quality. Although my focus was on mobile communications, I also tackled other service orientations such as call centres. I've found lately that customer service is anything but and that trying to get any help from a call centre is often an exercise in futility. For the next three or four Tuesdays, I'll break down simple, yet too often overlooked, procedures to escalate organisations' customer focus to a much higher level.

Intelligent Use of Service Quality Information Prevents Call Centre Overload

A Cautionary Tale

Customer care is an expression which, in many industries, has become synonymous with complaints being dealt with by AI or entry-level staff and little to no commitment from management. It appears to have, in a sense, become the Cinderella of service provision where it should be receiving, if not the bulk, certainly a large proportion of an organisation’s time and effort. It is, in a very real sense, the front-facing service of the organisation and may well define how the organisation as a whole is viewed by its customers and even whether or not customers will want to do business with the organisation. Well-trained as well as timeously and  -informed customer-facing staff are critical to the health of an organisation.

Organisations which recognise the importance of a properly trained, knowledgeable and informed staff complement, across the board, are those which prosper. John Cleese famously asked, "Who killed the sale?" He posited that anyone in an organisation is a salesperson and should be trained and incentivised sufficiently to be a proud representative of the organisation. This is especially true of call centre staff. 

There is no industry or organisation in the world where there are no alternatives available if service is bad. This even extends to government monopoly industries. The truth is that people will always find an alternative if they are annoyed or disillusioned enough.

In the next two or three posts, I'll give some views on how to refocus a company to promote the call centre facility as a customer-focused entity rather than an afterthought which is, often, ill- and under-informed about issues which may impact customers.