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9 Top Tips: How to deliver customer service excellence and reduce costs during the economic downturn, by James L. Tanner
What is excellent customer service?
From our experience, by accomplishing these nine steps you can reduce customer service costs while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty in your service operations.
9 golden rules to challenge the economic downturn:
1. Customer experience strategy - Communicate the goal
Delivering exceptional customer service should be the central aim of any organisation. Everyone involved in the business, from top management to agents, needs to be aware of its importance and what they need to do to make this happen. By maintaining exceptional customer service during a slowdown, companies with a strong core of loyal customers position themselves for growth and gain a competitive edge.
2. Identify cost-saving initiatives - self-service
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.
Complaint handling
These complaint handling solutions can also be applied to reduce the number of
simple queries received by your organisation. 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 prevent 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.
To apply self-service you need to do the following: --
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For more information please click: http://www.commsdept.com/call-handling.html
3. Define and measure 5 contact handling performance targets across all channels
It is crucial that agents understand their own performance targets across all channels, and know how to achieve them, as part of your customer experience strategy. Incentive schemes also work very well to reward high performing agents. The targets need to be constantly monitored e.g. to answer 999 emergency calls within 5 seconds. For all new initiatives clear accountability for meeting contact centre performance targets need to be established
4. Segment service levels
Identify and prioritise the different types of customer contact so that the most important ones are answered 100% of the time and no calls are abandoned, for example an ambulance service can prioritise 999 calls over non emergency calls. Constantly measure the cost of delivering different service levels against the value provided by
the corresponding customer segment and constantly search for ways to reduce inefficiencies.
5. Make it easy for customers to contact you
Give the customer choices of multiple channels to contact you anytime, anyhow managing customer experience: phone, fax, email, SMS, Instant Messenger, correspondence, Web call me back, online, recorded messages and the option to leave a message.
6. Call Routing: Make the technology work for you
Set up automatic routines in your phone system so calls can be redirected to other teams/sites at busy times or when there is a staff shortage. Set up live alarms in your
call centre software to alert a supervisor when predefined call limits have been reached, so remedial action can be taken. Use workforce management software to help you calculate in advance the number of staff required to respond to different call volumes.
If you have more than one call centre, instead of managing many separate queues for incoming calls, create one (more information on www.commsdept.com/network-hosted-ivr.html) This way callers can be routed to the next available operator at any of the centres.
7. Improving customer experience and contact centre performance
By deploying the screen popping software, agents can view the telephone number
of the caller, and if it is an existing customer, their name, address, account number, and any notes/history. It could also show details and questions for the agent to ask based on the number/option the customer dialled. This helps to reduce the call time and makes the customer feel better about their relationship with your company.
8. Training
Contact handling staff need to be trained and trained well in multiple areas. The wider range of expertise they have, the more productive they become when answering different types of calls. Diverse agent skills also allow them to be re-assigned to other areas where they are needed most at any given time, enabling peaks in call volumes to be handled in a flexible way. However, if a customer needs specialist support, the agent should be able to route the call to a member of staff outside the call centre who has the expertise to resolve the problem quickly. It is the team leaders’ responsibility to listen to call recordings on a regular basis and deliver one-to-one coaching. By providing ongoing training and advice, they improve agent’s performance and reinforce good practice. The whole call centre should strive to make the experience for every customer a positive one which will naturally lead to reduced call volumes (a lower number of repeat calls and shorter calls), and thus reduced overall costs.
9. Telecom Audit with a call centre consultant
Undertake a hardware/software telecom audit to ensure you are getting the best out
of your telephone systems, call logging software and web sites and that they are fit for purpose. Furthermore check your land line telecom, mobile phones 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. Appointing a Telecoms Consultant to carry out the audit will ensure you maximise the benefit form these steps. More information on: http://www.commsdept.com/telecom-audit.html
Communications Department are telecom and contact centre consultants who have worked with many organisations over the last 6 years helping them improving customer experience and to reduce costs. 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. For Camden Council, we undertook a telecom audit on an annual spend of £1.5million and saved £500,000. For some of our customer testimonials, please go to: --http://www.commsdept.com/telecom-consultancy-customers.html
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Author
James Tanner, Communications Department Ltd. © helps organisations maximise the efficiency of call handling teams to become leaders in their industry. For more information on improving call handling performance call +44 (0)20 8127 8302 or email jtanner@communications-department.co.uk,
http://www.communications-department.co.uk.
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