BLOG: Y Are We Waiting…

My interest was piqued by Andrew Bryan’s comments in a recent article in Call Centre Focus about poorly performing contact centres.

Bryan, Associate Director at the Henley Centre for Customer Management, said contact centres were failing to manage traffic, meaning customers were often forced to wait in queues for up to 40 minutes.

This has led to a shift in preference to self serve alternatives, particularly for Generation Y, who, according to Bryan, are more likely to complain and willing to air their views more frequently.

It saddens and surprises me to learn that customers are still experiencing these problems today – certainly on a regular basis. In the last 10 years, technology has improved immeasurably and Customer Service Advisers, savvier by their nature, are now more engaged and motivated than ever before. So why are we encountering the issues of yesteryear?

Clearly, no contact centre is perfect and all struggle to manage demand at one time or another. The younger generation have a natural tendency to serve themselves online and channels such as webchat are only going to increase in popularity over the coming years. But whilst customers are much more adept at building knowledge bases and taking ownership of transactions, we can’t underestimate the importance of customer service assistance. Advisers must be ready to intervene and take control if a consumer is struggling to seal the deal.

The biggest single determinant of customer satisfaction is the ease in which they’re able to gain access to the service they require. The challenge for organisations is to accurately predict the level of assisted service (voice, webchat) demand and thereby forecast the level of resource required.

Customer demand is subject to constant fluctuation meaning allocation of appropriate resources can be difficult to anticipate. But though the technological landscape may have changed, organisations must still count on the conduct and competence of their staff when it comes to establishing solid reputations – regardless of the channel they use to communicate.

by Neville Upton, Nov 15 2010, 09:43 PM