The Unseen Customer
The growth in the number of call centers world-wide has been remarkable. Depending on the source, the estimates range from an annual growth rate of 15% - 20+%. There does not appear to be an end in site as more companies recognize the strategic value of call centers in an e-commerce world and as the focal point for web-based customer transactions, email management and the traditional phone call!
This translates to a large-scale fundamental shift in customer service approaches. By the thousands, customer service transactions that once were face-to-face are now phone-set to phone-set. Companies making this transition must help their customers make the transition. Failure to do so only profits your competitor. If the customer had been previously serviced face-to-face through a point-of-sale (e.g. branch office), that relationship now occurs in entirely new ways for the customer.
What does it take to successfully make this migration for the customer? Building trust with the customer and delivering consistent service! A customer who was once satisfied with doing business face-to-face may now have to experience doing business with you via the phone (or web or email for that matter). In order for customers to successfully make the transition to the new service model, your agents must build instant trust with the customer when they call. Consistency of service includes excellent response times (i.e. short waits) and consistent customer service processes.
How do you deliver on these two key components? Trust is developed through training your agents. Building trust with customers is akin to building customer loyalty. A customer that trusts your company will do business with you. A customer that trusts your agents will likely do business with you repeatedly. Train agents and then train them again on developing loyal (trusting) customer relationships.
Consistency of service is developed through the careful crafting of the business rules, processes and procedures that guide the agent through the customer based transaction. Consistency of service also helps build that trusting loyal customer relationship. Approach the consistency of service issue from a business process re-engineering mind set — a mind set that focuses first on the customer. A plane trip illustrates the point. Whenever you fly, you want the pilots to do exactly what they did the last time you flew with them. After all you are around to read this so it must have been a successful customer transaction for you! Pilots are people who excel at doing the same thing over and over exactly as the manual states. If the pilot arbitrarily opted out of completing part of the checklist, the flight may not result in a satisfactory customer transaction! Agents need clear instruction and need to be measured on their consistency in following the business rules and processes that ensure that the customer is properly serviced. Your customers will enjoy the consistency in service.
Building trust with the customer and delivering consistent service. Two key aspects of building a lasting customer relationship in a call center e-commerce world.
Posted: January 28th, 2007 under Customers.
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