Experts in Improving the Customer Experience and Audits

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How to maximise the customer experience and reduce contact handling staff costs by up to 50%, by James L. Tanner

 

The objective of these call centre tips is to outline how you can apply self-service to reduce contact handling staff costs by up to 50% while improving contact centre performance, customer satisfaction and loyalty during the economic downturn.

The cost of customer contact

 

A recent public sector survey found that the average cost per contact was £15 for
face to face, £12 for postal enquiries, £5 for phone enquiries and 6p for online. For 120,000 contacts it would cost £1.8m to manage face to face contacts, £1.44m to manage postal enquiries, £600k to manage phone enquiries and just £7,200 to
manage online self-service enquiries.

What is excellent customer service?

Based on six years of helping clients in managing the customer experience here are the key areas of focus when delivering exceptional customer service and reducing costs:  

Communicate - Customer service excellence: The board needs to clearly define its customer contact strategy; how it is going to offer exceptional customer service and how this should be implemented in detail by all staff.

Measure: Define, implement and review measures across all channels for contact centre performance; ensure five contact handling targets per person are met monthly: e.g. maximum ring time: 20 seconds.

Call Routing: Segment types of contact: as part of your customer contact strategy e.g., if an emergency services organisation or a utility company handles emergency and non emergency calls, prioritise the emergency calls so 100% of them get answered in 1 ring.

Technology: When a call or email is received, automatically route it to the next available agent in any of your sites worldwide, for more details please click: http://www.commsdept.com/network-hosted-ivr.html

Training: Train staff in the different products and services you offer, so they can handle different types of queries.

Agent productivity: When an inbound call is received from someone who has contacted your organisation previously, your agent’s PC should display the customer’s details and a complete history of all their interactions. This would reduce the time needed on the call and help you deliver exceptional customer service.

Telecoms audit: Appoint a Telecoms Consultant to undertake a hardware/software telecom audit to ensure you are getting the best out of your telephone systems, call logging software, call centre software and web sites and that they are fit for purpose. Furthermore check your land line telecom, mobile phone and WAN bills monthly to ensure you are using all the services you are paying for, cancel any unused services and constantly reduce costs where possible. More information on: - http://www.commsdept.com/telecom-audit.html

For more detail on the above see our article 9 Top Tips: How to deliver excellent customer service and reduce costs during the economic downturn.

 

Self-service

Self-service is where no agent is involved in the customer contact.

 

Types of self-service include: --

Interactive web site

Recorded messages

Telephone automated payments:

Pro-active automatic alerts by email/SMS.

PC terminals and in-house telephones in your reception for customer access.

Direct debit

Self service can be applied to simple issues across all contact channels (phone, correspondence and face to face) at all times or if you prefer, only out of hours to
help in managing the customer experience.

 

To reduce simple enquiries we can: --

Automate –

A housing association could register a social housing applicant for automated updates on the progress of an application by email or SMS, so he would not need to contact them again.

 

Eliminate –

This applies to situations where customers need to make regular payments e.g. council tax. Instead of paying over the counter we could encourage them to pay by Direct Debit.

Simplify –

Organisations could state simple information like opening hours as a recorded message on their phone system and on their web site.

  

Benefits of self-service to deliver exceptional customer service

Fewer front line staff are needed, these extra resources can be redeployed in other parts of organisation or to handle more complex queries.

1 contact only: e.g. Amazon’s customer contact strategy was for customers to contact them only once to place an order, after they receive an order, they automatically send out regular alerts by email to confirm the order, give a delivery forecast and then an actual delivery date. They constantly monitor why customers contact them after an order is placed and apply self service to reduce contact levels. Amazon’s contact centre performance has improved - contact levels have dropped by 30% as a result.

 

Self-service challenges

Sponsor –

For a self-service initiative to be successful, it is vital that an organisation has a sponsor with a senior authority.

 

Top 30 Simple Frequently Asked Questions –

Record and evaluate monthly the top 30 simple FAQs across all channels to ensure self-service channels are providing relevant information.

 

Feedback –

Receive monthly feedback from customers and contact handling staff. Ensure that ideas for improving customer experience based on that feedback are implemented.

Monitor Self-Service Statistics –

Monitor self-service statistics monthly to identify which are the most popular and unpopular channels used; based on this feedback, the self-service channels can be modified/improved, appropriately.

Channel conflict –

Outsourcers charge up to £1/ per min for each inbound call, so they are not incentivised
to promote self service. Ensure that your outsourcer’s measures include promoting the self-service options.

Marketing self service –

Newly implemented self service options need to be pro-actively marketed across all channels. Customers need to be encouraged to use them on a regular basis. They need to be implemented properly and made easy to use, otherwise the uptake will be very slow.

 

Complaints Handling

These are just a few suggestions regarding service delivery and complaint handling*. These complaint handling ideas can also be applied to reduce any simple queries received by your organisation.

To help improve service delivery, the process needs to be reviewed internally, but from
the customer’s perspective:

What must be in place before any contact is made with the customer?

What happens at each step of the interaction with the customer?

What happens following the interaction with the customer?

Make sure that any documentation produced by your service delivery teams is simple, straightforward and user friendly for both customers and staff alike. Test your processes to destruction before implementing them so you can be certain they are achieving the expected end result. Ask yourself and the team involved:

Can this process be simplified?

Can it be reduced?

Could it be eliminated completely?

From the customer’s perspective, how can it be made more flexible, more convenient and more efficient?

And of course you can also involve your customers in this process – they will have a very relevant and particular view of your processes and procedures!

Despite the best efforts of everyone involved in generating your service delivery processes, complaints will arise. To get to the root cause of an issue which generates complaints and make the most of your chances to resolve it while also preventing the complaint from recurring, you must involve the appropriate people. Employees who work in the area of service delivery about which the customer is complaining are usually the best people to say what may be the cause of the problem. After all, the guy on the production line often sees what’s causing a problem with the finished product but has
no way (or is not encouraged) to get involved in putting that right. Make sure you engage with your people to harness their knowledge and practical experience.

At the same time, use your CRM system to help you record information, spot trends and take remedial action before third parties such as the press or social networking sites force you to do so. An analysis of your complaints data will help you measure the impact of complaints on all parties involved – customers, colleagues across the business and even suppliers. This will galvanise you in seeking out the real root cause of the complaint and enable you to focus on the obvious influencing factors with the intention of overcoming them. 

 

Summary

Appoint a senior board member as a possible project sponsor

List the Top 30 simple FAQs across all channels with their answers on a monthly basis, and submit this information on your intranet so staff can access it. Based on this information we can decide how to eliminate, automate and simplify them with self-service.

Plan and deploy a pro-active campaign to market your self service.

We have worked with many organisations over the last 6 years, helping them in managing the customer experience and to implement the above call centre tips. For one of our customers, Great Western Ambulance Service, we reduced their 999 incoming ring time from 11 to 5 seconds and substantially increased the number of calls answered by each agent, while for Camden Council, we undertook a telecom audit on a spend of £1.5million p.a. and saved them £500k. For more information on how to reduce contact handling staff costs please click here: http://www.commsdept.com/call-handling.html

 

James Tanner

James Tanner is the Managing Director of Communications Department Ltd based in the UK. Communications Department are cost-effective telecom specialists and contact centre consultants focusing on call handling optimisation and business performance improvements.

Contact: James Tanner at Communications Department Ltd. ©

Tel: +44 (0)20 8127 8302. Email: jtanner@communications-department.co.uk,

Web: www.communications-department.co.uk

*= The complaint handling ideas were written by Kathy Stiff from Supporting Customer Care Ltd.

 

For more details on how to improve contact centre performance click here »