Call Centre

With a few exceptions, call centres are pretty awful. One reason is that customers aren’t pushing hard enough for improvement. They might complain bitterly about the lousy wait times, but they will consider that against a background of all the other poor call centre experiences and partition it off. If the value of a brand is truly a measure of ‘everything’ including all customer touch points then it seems there is an opportunity being missed.Ethnographic research has shown that customers compare online experiences between different brands, and even different sectors so they expect the same service from a white goods supplier as they do from one that provides consumables. So why haven’t customers started to compare experiences between different channels and demanded an improvement in the call centre?

There has been grumbling in customer service forums, but it’s had little effect. Businesses have been looking at improvements, but they have been focused on adding and optimising single channels. Integration has been a relatively recent phenomenon.

I believe the recession will be a catalyst for change, as it has been so many times before. The need to save money has placed business operations under a microscope and this will drive businesses to integrate previously disparate channels so that cross-channel service delivery becomes a reality.

Foviance has already seen a big increase in the number of organisations that are asking us to map out their customers’ journeys across all channels. We have then identified how the lower cost channels can be used to save money, without causing damage to the customer experience.

This is an area where co-creation is an excellent approach as the answers come from our consultants, customers and their customers working together, rather than in isolation. Indeed I would extend the group even further and include call centre consultancies. Many of these have already helped organisations identify a huge number of operational efficiencies. Without the constraint of a single channel, they could find new opportunities for further gains.

It is pleasing to see publications such as Customer Strategy, which has a long heritage in customer service and call centre strategy, embracing the change that is required and projecting itself as more cross-channel in its editorial approach and content. For example, the publication is currently running a series of masterclasses, the last of which in July is focussed on helping organisations establish a cross-channel approach to improving customer service and cutting costs. The masterclass will be run by RXperience. The course description includes the words “using a contact strategy that reinforces your brand”, and if organisations do start to take this approach, perhaps motivated by the recession, we will see a step change in the quality of customer experience delivery.

Foviance has just completed some research with call centre consultancy RXP, and its managing director Paul Weald and I presented the findings at the CCF/Customer Strategy Conference. Together we researched the travel industry to establish how well it delivered a multi-channel customer-experience. The research followed a similar piece carried out late last year and early this that focussed on the performance of 25 retailers.

Foviance has already conducted a range of multi-channel research, but this was the first work we have carried out in conjunction with a call centre consultancy. RXP is interesting because it focuses on the experience the call centre provides rather than simply performance metrics. I found that surprising, given the loathing the vast majority of consumers have for call centres. This was reason in itself for us engaging with RXP.

Most call centre consultancies appear to provide expertise in the areas of throughput, call centre staff motivation and operational infrastructure and management. These are all worthy causes but are all supply side and perhaps explain why service in call centres is considered so shoddy. To an extent this was supported anecdotally when I availed myself of a free massage provided to speakers at the conference. The young lady who took on the challenge of un-knotting my shoulders revealed that she finds call centre work fascinating - mainly because she can now see what goes on from both sides of the call. That moment when you are put on hold for some inexplicable reason becomes clear when you see the call centre operative using the self same moment to gather their thoughts and use the stress relief of a quick curse!

What surprised me most about the research was how utterly incompetent 90 percent of the companies we looked at were. Before we even examined whether the multi-channel experience worked - did the experience join up? did the call centre operative have the same view that the online customer did? - we had to get over the basics.

The usability issues were amazing. We found architectural and navigational problems that may not have surprised me seven years ago, but today, after so much education and such improvements in understanding, beggar belief. Some of the functionality failings were also staggering: instant messaging functionality that never got answered; call back technology where no call ever came; email facilities that in one case, nearly nine months later, has still to generate a reply (a major high-street supermarket, before you ask!).

Once we got our teeth into the call centre it was even worse. In quite a few cases I wondered why the organisation was providing a call centre at all. It must have been on someone’s list: “Website? Check. Call centre? Check. Okay, we’re done here.” The service offered no value add to the customer at all. The organisation itself often had even less access to information than the customer. Staff were not trained to up-sell, cross-sell or handle difficult calls. What purpose could any of this serve?

The recurring nightmare that the research revealed time and time again was that organisationally, many call centres, websites, and any other channels for that matter, are on the whole, managed by entirely separate functions. In many cases the channels actually compete with each other and the customer is in no way the centre of attention. If you want to find out more you can download the white papers from either the RXP or the Foviance websites.

As the economy tightens I cannot see how organisations that fail at the basics are going to survive. If spending is tightened, improvements won’t be made and customer loyalty and conversion will suffer. My hope is that this economic slow-down, like many before it, will force organisations to make dramatic changes and that ultimately the customer will benefit.

Our continuing research into the value of virtual agents as customer-facing online tools for businesses has yielded some very interesting responses from participants.

We wanted to find out how well virtual agents would be accepted as frontline substitutes for actual call centre staff. Our studies showed that the majority of helpdesks have noticed an ‘80/20 rule’, whereby 80 percent of the calls they field are very similar and frequent, while only the smaller volume of calls requires more personal attention.

If implemented intelligently, taking into account the emotional and intellectual reactions of consumers, virtual agents can fill a round-the-clock, on-demand, self-service help role for busy organisations. They can help maintain genuine customer relationships, while freeing up the valuable time of real-life support staff who can then step into the fray if and when enquiries are escalated to a more hands-on channel.

One project conducted in conjunction with the Royal Mail caused us to look at prototype assistants as part of a more general study into customer awareness and acceptance of virtual agents. As well as being a pleasing visual element for a support page, virtual agents give customers the impression that there is someone actively helping them. They add a human feel to any website, providing a business with a consistent face.

Participants in our studies responded very positively to virtual agents, despite the fact many people remained unsure as to whether the characters were simply a rich help feature, or a genuine live chat session. (We recommend businesses clarify that the agent isn’t live with text close to the agent’s image.) A number of respondents simply enjoyed the virtual agent concept, judging it to be “cool” as well as a useful tool for secondary help and for “weird or exceptional” enquiries they couldn’t find answers to elsewhere on the page.

Once implemented, it’s vital that any virtual agent is populated with sufficient relevant support information to be of genuine help to customers. On average, respondents in our study said they would attempt to use the virtual agent two to three times before abandoning the feature.

As you would expect, choosing the face for the agent is very important. Faces need to look trustworthy, helpful, informal and cheerful, but not dishonest, false, unprofessional or stern. Model looks and fake smiles were big no-nos with our sample, while a certain amount of maturity was considered a bonus.

Perhaps less obvious were the reasons given for choosing the right name for an agent. Unusual or old-fashioned names were given the boot, as were names considered “upper class”. Simple, common names were thought of as far more friendly and helpful sounding. From this feedback we quickly realised that smiling, smart, approachable faces named Sarah, Laura or Kate were going to prove far more popular than sharp looking characters in business suits (or overly casual dress) named Olivia, or Polly. It can be surprising what characteristics appeal or don’t appeal to a test sample, but given a broad range of feedback and provided with the explanations behind choices, a clear picture of general preferences quickly builds.

On the whole, customers are perfectly willing to suspend belief and cooperate with a virtual agent, but they have to believe in and want to like the virtual person they are faced with. Royal Mail’s web-based self-service virtual agent ‘Ask Sarah‘ is integrated with the organisation’s other online services as well as its parcel tracking system and delivery status updates. Revealingly, Sarah has helped to raise Royal Mail’s web site hits from 3.5 million in 2007 to 4.5 million in the first half of this year alone.

“10% of you have listened to people having sex!” This was just one of the many statistics provided to call centre operatives by Tim Bishop, Head of Strategy for programme and awards sponsor Siemens at last nights gala dinner and awards ceremony for the ‘Top 50 Call Centres‘. The evening celebrated customer service excellence and the atmosphere from the outset was palpable.

The screen behind the stage rotated the logos of the top 50 companies, and there was a cheer from each group every time their logo appeared. The auditory Mexican wave was something to behold and went on throughout the dinner until the awards ceremony proper began. After an hour or so of continued, and increasingly enthusiastic cheering, I began to realise how little positive recognition the call centre operatives receive and also how competitive they are.

Eamonn Holmes hosted the evening and presented the awards and was an excellent speaker. He particularly enjoyed congratulating the team of nine very attractive ladies and one ‘fella’ from Holiday Express who won the best overall in the Entertainment, Leisure and Travel category. He even took the trouble to visit their table after the awards had ended and congratulate them personally. What a martyr!

The awards are the brain child of Claudia Hathway, Editor of CCF magazine who opened the event with a rousing speech about how call centre operatives were unrecognised for the good work they do. She set a challenge for all companies to achieve an average of 95% satisfaction next year, which looks like a tough target if you ignore how competitive these people are. The data was pulled together by mystery shopping partner GFK NOP who carried out the biggest ever survey of its kind gathering real customer experience data based on real consumer feedback. And the competition was very close with only 1 1/2% separating the top 5 call centres.

So finally, here are the winners:

* 1st was First Direct, who were also 1st in the Financial Services category. They achieved an overall satisfaction score of 91.73%.
* Denplan were narrowly beaten into second place with 91.32%
* 3rd was F&C Investments with 91.26%
* 4th overall was Lloyds TSB Insurance with 91.02%
* 5th and also best in the retail category was Laithwaites with 90.36%
* 6th Prudential with 89.33%
* 7th with 89.29% Charles Tyrwhitt
* 8th ING Direct with 87.89%
* 9th was Specsavers with 87.57%
* 10th and also winners in the public sector category were Cambridgshire County Council with a customer service rating of 87.13%
* Holiday Extras won the best in Entertainment/Leisure and Travel category with a rating of 85%

Given our recent study in to the travel sector the low overall score and lowest category score is of no surprise and clearly, for all the celebrating last night, this sector has a lot to do.

In this study we researched three airlines and their respective hotel partners plus three online travel agents (OTAs). Due to recent legislative changes in the travel industry, Airlines are now able to compete more directly with OTAs by offering packaged holidays.

Travel is one such sector which similar to retail has a multi-channel tradition. Before the advent of the Internet the travel sector relied on call centre, travel agents, Teletext and intermediaries as channels to market and we wanted to learn whether this experience has proved as valuable in travel, as mail-order has been to retail.

Our research has shown that the travel sector is on a par with the average level achieved by retail in online execution but failing when it comes to call centre and multi-channel customer experience. Only one of the organisations researched provided an acceptable level of call centre service. To help address these failings, this white paper gives recommendations that travel companies should adopt to improve their overall Customer Experience ratings.

In any fast-moving industry, it’s usually possible to get a glimpse of the future by studying the past. The foundations of the modern usability and customer experience industry were built from the principles of HCI, or human-computer interaction, an area of study which kick-started ongoing investigation into the interface between technology and people across a broad variety of platforms and channels.

When the HCI industry gathered momentum in the 1980s, it was primarily concerned with making desktop software easier to use. By the time the mass-market leapt online in the 1990s and branches of HCI had begun evolving into usability, its proponents were employing ‘discount usability’ methods that made some headway to improving usability but were not allowed to slow down development timescales.

During the 1990s web design methods and agency productivity centered on technology itself rather than the eventual consumers of the information, and this attitude dictated the design process. By 2001, a more user-centric approach had begun gaining currency within the web design community and we were ahead of the pack in recognising the value of usability testing. We believed it was important to conduct usability studies in the early stages of web design, helping to create sites that were more in keeping with the needs of end users. We understood the importance of the bottom-line needs of businesses, but argued successfully that aligning design with what was best for its users would ultimately be good for business too.

Back to the present day: I believe it is time that similar user-centric design techniques used so successfully for the web are now applied to a wide range of other services across multiple channels. The experiences customers have with different channels are summed to make up the customer’s impression of the whole brand, and forward thinking companies need to be thinking about customer experience holistically. It doesn’t matter that the web experience is great if the call centre keeps people on hold forever, for example. Similarly, it doesn’t matter that goods are shipped immediately if they’re poorly packaged and arrive smashed into pieces.

We are applying the same rigour with which we approach webdesign across all other customer ‘touch points’, to establish where there are breakdowns. We have found that when we take this user-centric design approach, our clients improve their customer experience, boost retention and satisfaction
of calls, increase customer ‘lifetimes’, and the whole business is impacted positively and profitably, just as it was with the earlier days of user-centric web usability.

Some people say that unlike time and turnover, customer experience is intangible and impossible to measure. We disagree. With the right metrics, and the processes to record them, you can measure the quality of the customer experience. The Apple Store, which offers customer support surgeries and training, shows how a good customer experience can be an important part of the brand. While there are many companies that see customer experience as a cost, those that thrive will be the ones who choose to see it as a worthwhile investment.