twelve solutions

2008 is gradually coming to an end. Just as we take stock and conduct reviews of our personal achievements for the year, we should do the same for our professional achievements. Have we met our set targets for the year? What new skills have we acquired to make us better customer service representatives? What trainings were we able to attend during the year? Answers to these and many other questions will help us determine if we have been successful this year.

Personal development plans help us document our personal aspirations and goals. Often times we get so involved with our jobs that we forget to set personal development plans for ourselves. While some organisations encourage staff to make and document these plans, few ever care to conduct reviews of these plans periodically. As individuals, we must take time out to document our plans yearly.

Frequent reviews are also very important as they show us gaps between where we are and where we want to be by the end of the year. Most importantly we can review what we need to do to get to where we want to be. Will we forever wait for our organisations to give us that all important training and certification which we need to further our careers?

I believe that no one knows and understands your long term goals more than YOU. So if you know that to get that dream Customer Service Manager position you’ve always wanted, you need to understand customer relations or customer intelligence better, why not enrol for a one day seminar/training. Save up for it and actually attend it (even if you have to use a day of your vacation).

Its time to audit your career and development targets for this year. What would you do differently if given a chance? Your answer will surely guide you in the right direction.

When last did you walk into a store and receive a very warm greeting that made you smile? For me its been a while and it happens so little and far between that I’m startled when it does happen.

A warm greeting when you receive a client makes a world of difference. Its sets the stage for a pleasant transaction, may even convert a window shopper into an actual buyer, and it definitely costs nothing to offer a warm greeting.

So how should we welcome our customers? If you really love your job or are making any effort at trying to enjoy it then this shouldn’t be hard to figure out. A smile, eye contact, maybe a handshake, will definitely make our customers take a second look at us and diffuse any hostility. Our culture sometimes requires our genuflecting when greeting elders in the society. If the customer is really advanced in age and tends to communicate with you in your local dialect then I guess it won’t hurt for you to genuflect while greeting him.

Is this customer a regular at your service point? Then you should know his/her name, ask about the family, initiate a bit of small talk. The customer will surely feel happy, because you’ve shown him/her that you care. Its common sight for mothers to move around with their kids to informal environments, know their names too so you can ask about them when the mother comes in alone.

Its important that we learn to enjoy our jobs as CSR’s because its only then that we can incorporate a winning attitude.

Prejudgement is a crime that most customer service representatives are guilty of committing. We all may have committed this grave service offence at one time or the other during our careers. When we see customers walking towards us or say hello over the phone we are already categorising and segmenting that customer and this affects the service we render.

As professional service representatives, we should never prejudge ANYONE. Everyone who walks in or calls in to the organisation should be given a memorable, consistent experience that will keep them coming back for more.

Often times we become rude to customers who may sound illiterate, have poor diction or walk into our offices or shops dressed in shabby attires. Experience may have shown us that appearance or diction has no correlation with the spending power of an individual. Statistics also show us that the customers who do the lowest volumes of business with us are often the ones who when satisfied “blow the trumpet loudest”.

Why then should the appearance or speech impairments define the service we offer to our customers? In this business we have to give everyone our very best, because we may be losing business when we don’t.

Last month we looked at measuring our First Contact Resolution rate. This month we will be reviewing the handle time of customer transactions and its effect on the customer experience. Normally as customers we like to take the time to fully express our needs or wants at every service point and would become irritated when rushed by the attending customer service rep (CSR). This feeling of being rushed is often looked on as rudeness from the CSR.

Human resource management is usually inclined to quantify the amount of work done by CSR’s by the number of customer interactions they may have handled for the review period. A huge percentage of their performance review is normally based on this factor.

While this may seem a logical measurement we must be careful not to put our customer relationships at risk with this evaluation criterion. If our major focus as an organisation is to ensure customer satisfaction then we must allow our CSR’s ample time to deal with these transactions otherwise we will be putting our customer relationships at risk. It becomes a contradiction of sorts if we request our CSR’s to minimise the amount of time spent on each customer interaction, (thereby increasing the number of transactions) and also ensure all customers needs are met and even exceeded.

Human instincts would normally drive the average person to apply a speedy courteous approach to the customer interaction to the detriment of the customer experience. This is so because no one wants to be identified as “not having met his/her targets”. And the consequence of unmet targets would normally reflect on the employee’s pay cheque.

So what do you think and what is currently implemented in your environment? Are you measuring the quality of the interactions and maintaining your customer relationships or are you measuring the quantity/ number of transactions handled by your CSR’s?

In this section, we will discuss a new customer service tip each month, stating its benefits and possibly comments by customer service representatives. Our tip for this month is starting with the right ATTITUDE.

While we go about our daily lives, we discover that service is an integral part of us and we are either in a service offering or receiving position. We frown and are upset when service given to us does not meet our standards and we are happy when it’s fantastic. However, the receiver determines what constitutes good customer service at every point in time.

Whenever we find ourselves in a service offering position, we need to listen attentively and assist the service requestor in a way he or she would leave happy and satisfied.

Recently I walked into a restaurant to pick up a few pastries, feeling happy about the upcoming weekend I went to the counter to make my purchase. However, my upbeat manner was shot down with a surly look from the attendant; and I thought what had I done to deserve this ATTITUDE.

The difference between good customer service and bad customer service often times simply lies in the ATTITUDE! To offer good customer service, we must be prepared to keep an upbeat attitude, and do away with any negative attitude. Someone with a positive attitude will attempt to help, even if they don’t have all the answers. They will search for an answer or find someone who can help. Someone with a negative attitude will treat a request for help as an intrusion, interference or simply as a bother taking them away from what they were doing.

So how is your attitude today? Are you being helpful or frustrating? Let’s take time to reflect on this and think about how we can improve. The bottom line is we are responsible for whatever attitude we exhibit, and only when we choose to change can we be different and stand out as stars.

In this edition, we take a look at a critical factor in call centre management that is often overlooked – occupancy. Occupancy can be defined as the amount of time call centre agents are actually occupied on customer contacts during a shift. It is usually measured as a percentage of the call centre agents total shift time spent busy in talk or wrap up. Occupancy is often used as a statistic in calculating call centre productivity and is a critical factor in call centre staffing.

The question to ask here is why should CC Managers measure occupancy rates in their environment? Low occupancy rate is an indication of an overstaffed call centre or poor scheduling scenario, and with call centre agent costs consuming over half of the call centre budget, Managers need to keep track of the resources. Likewise, an extremely high occupancy rate will indicate likelihood of high abandonment of contacts, and high pressure on call centre agents bringing on exhaustion and a downslide in quality standards.

For centres that have implemented skill based routing, it is important to track occupancy per skill group so as to determine a course of action when it gets overboard – possibly cross train other groups to allow for failover during peak periods. Understanding the work pressures being faced by call centre agents is a good reason for tracking the occupancy ratio.  

Measuring agent occupancy is the reverse to service level. To improve service level, we’ll need to increase headcount effectively ensuring everyone is less busy thereby reducing occupancy. Likewise, to improve occupancy levels, we could reduce the head count, thereby increasing workload per person and creating less idle time. However this will impact negatively on the service level.

While there are no agreed industry standards, many call centre managers are of the opinion that a centre’s occupancy should not exceed eighty five percent (85%). This should ensure that your agents are not under pressure the whole shift and are therefore able to meet agreed quality standards.

One key way to ensure that the occupancy levels are at the right level is staffing (scheduling) accurately. Random call arrival in the call centre creates peak and off peak periods during a workday thereby making scheduling accurately more of an uphill battle for call centres. The trick therefore, is to schedule covering all the periods as adequately as possible without overstaffing whilst ensuring that agents are not under-utilised.

So while preparing that budget, make sure you’re monitoring the occupancy ratio as you analyse your service level and evaluate scheduling and staffing needs

Hello everyone,

We’ve launched our all new blog! It promises to be very exciting and informative.

Customer Service is a very special area for us and we have decided to put up various topics within the call centre and customer service area for discussion. Customer Service is very important for any business to survive. Many organisations in our environment still choose to ignore customer service or see it simply as something that gulps a lot of funds. When training sessions are held within organisations, junior level staff are mandated to attend while the company executives use work to avoid attending these sessions. This attitude from senior management staff does not help change the attitude of junior staff towards customers. For a customer service culture change to effectively occur, all staff need to be a part of the process.

A ripple effect of not involving the entire organisation is that the customers take the final punch. Customers get bad service from the front line staff and their issues are not dealt with internally because no one within the organisation’s management empathises; having not been a part of the process.

What attitude does your organisation have towards customers? Are there two “standards” in operation? Do senior staff ensure that junior staff imbibe the customer service culture but remove themselves from the process?

How about the customer? How do we feel when our issues remain unresolved by front line customer service personnel and we are told that our issues will be escalated to senior management, and many weeks down the line we’re still waiting for response?

Will be back again later.

Ati