how not to run a call center 5

[orypecos]

I have worked on call centers for over 10 years and still can not believe that companies insist on abusing their customers and then spend millions of dollars in advertising try to get them back after they sever their relationship.

First, don't make your agents have 'auto-in'. (That means that as soon as the agent it off of one call they get another one)The reason not to do this is it forces the agent to keep the current caller online after they have finished with them, but are still filling out the paperwork. The customer has better things to do than to make your 'numbers' on your CMS look better. Or worse, the agent gets the next call and is still working on the last call and makes the new caller wait while they finish the last call. HELLLO!!!!!! Does anyone see a customer dissatisfaction problem here???

The next thing not to do is use IP phones and IP trunks to talk to remote call centers in India, Philippines, or where ever else. An American can usually understand one of these people if there is a great call quality, but if U are using IP phones and trunks the call quality drops enough to make the call very difficult. Is 'difficult' what U are looking for when your customer is already peeved because he got laid off because a outsourcing was done overseas?

Another practice to avoid is having a message keep on coming on while a customer is in cue. Just play the music and the customer can stay busy doing something else and not be interrupted every 3 minutes with a ring and then a announcement that they have to wait some more. The customer has to stop what they are doing and listen to see if a real live person is going to help them. U are irritating your customers even more than having to wait in cue because U believe it is more important to keep your agents busy than it is to help your customers.

If U want so more suggestions, just ask, because I know what U are doing wrong and why your customers as going to your competitors. But maybe U do to, but it is just YOUR manager that insists that 'bean counting' is more important than customer satisfaction.

 

[kwing112000]

Great Post. Its all so true.

Kevin Wing
ACA- Implement IP Office
Carousel Industries

 

[SYQUEST]

Boy, you hit the nail on the head, and then some!!

Don't you just love the gruggling audio and the weird background sound when you are trying to understand the person you are talking with, because people are soooo enthralled with cheap phone service at the cost of quality transmission, and not to mention the corporate greed of bean counters and CEOs!

....JIM....

 

[gknight1]

i agree with most of it but.

this is pointing to your auto-in issue... have you heard of Busy Wrap Up???

 

[doktor]

Good post.

You need to tell your costumers about this!
The best way: Let them call their own call centre, and see if they are happy with it!
We tend to do this in most cases...
In many cases the Agent-Busy-Between-Calls time is increased. (Ericsson: Clerical Time).
///doktor

 

[hawks]

And let's not forget the ones who try to use an IVR unit and it takes you about 10 minutes just to get to a live person. Why do they set the IVR up so that it ask for name, number, account, first born childs name, ect, ect. Just so when the live person comes on they can ask you the same things all over again.

 

[orypecos]

Busy Wrap Up???
Is that 'timed after call work"?
Whenever I ask the agent why I have to give the information again they usually say that system never works. That always makes me feel better.

 

[EddieDuece]

In the Nortel word, the wrap up time is called "Post Call Processing" or PCP. You even get that information printed out to you in the ACD reports.

 

[gknight1]

yes the Busy Wrap Up (Avaya) and the Post Call Processing (Nortel) is for whenever the agent hangs up with the caller, the phone system will not send any calls to that agent until the busy timer is done. most reporting packages have that field to report on now.

 

[aarenot]

I have done numerous systems, and one of the best things to offer a customers incoming callers is a callback service. The caller leaves a message, and the number to return the call to, and the system can be used to return the calls in order recieved. It also cuts down on the que 800 call expense waiting on hold/in que. I love it when my cell battery does not get worn down to listen to the crap music, and cheap queueing recording.

 

[Sympology]

That's one difference. I run a call centre phone system, and as we are business to business, max wait times tend to be 30 seconds.

Also as I design the systems, I strongly resist if they want more than 2 layers of IVR.

E.g thankyou blah blah blah. Please choose from server, desktop or printer.

Choose HP or Sun.

The end.

Oh and the IVR's should actually have a function, so if you choose Servers and Sun, you shouldn't go to a HP printer guy!

The worst thing (I refuse to add it)

Your call is important to us.....

No it's not. If it was that important, you'd employ more staff!



Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[donb01]

In the healthcare environment that I work in the callback option usually doesn't work. We don't employ enough staff now otherwise we'd be able to take the calls in real time, and the staff we have is usually swamped. When someone gets enough downtime to breath they have just about enough time to login to voicemail before the calls are stacked up waiting again.

What you end up with there (in our case) is customers that are upset because their calls are not returned until after the call center shuts down for the day, and staff that is upset because they have to stay late to empty out the mailboxes and try to call people back (who are then eating dinner and even more crabby).

In some cases I have a call processing application in front of the call center to try and sort out the calls that come in. If you need a prescription refill, press 1 - fill out a voice form (to eliminate rambling) and those messages show up in the mailbox at pharmacy, if you need to schedule or change an appointment it goes to the schedulers, and only if you have a problem that actually requires a Doctor or Nurse (checking on results, dosage questions, etc) does it go to the call center.

If I do send someone to a mailbox I prefer to use voice forms to make sure they provide all the information that will be needed by whoever writes up the call, and to eliminate calls like "Hi, this is Betty. I'm not sure if I should be calling you or not, could you call me back I have a few questions" which tell you nothing and tend to receive the lowest callback priority. The voice form is very efficient because it just lists the customer responses, in the order they appear on the log sheet, separated by a beep or "ding dong" tone. In this way you can research or try to solve the problem before you call back the customer, and satisfaction is much higher. "Hi, this is Doctors R' Us, I looked into your problem and here is the answer....".

 

[Westi]

There will always be some exceptions to any rule you make up, there is no single site in my care that has two identical setups, every one is unique and has some features and special setups that fit the needs of the customers. The same is said for call centres but the first post is probably a guide for 99% f all call centres.

Joe W.

FHandw., ACA, ACS

If you can't be good, be good at it!

 

[senk1s]

All good points ... oryxpecos - good old definity !!

- I usually consider poorly operating call centers as a mismatch between system abilities and expectations, not desgined properly, not engineered properly, not trained properly, not staffed properly

- VoIP Quality has come a long way from just a couple of years ago (still not as guaranteed as the 'PSTN')

- Quality of Service - availability/ reliability/ scalability ... (in call centers and everywhere else) depends on the resources alloted by the company - and it is going to break at some point. It is very subjective as well. The company should be aware of this - and must be ready to adapt. (If you have 100 trunks, 150 agents ... the 101st simultaneous call is going to fail - a good system knows that this happened 5 times yesterday, and additional trunks get ordered and they lived happily ever after

 

[Sympology]

Before to many jump on the VoIP is evil bandwagon, it is also a damm good life saver.

We have redudant systems, where there is no single point of failure. Even if the main exchange in the area fails the Non Geo will fail over to an exchange 200 miles away and route back to the orginal system. Instantly, no fuss.
Phones & Software can be switched to another site 10 miles away by a simple DNS change

Our next DR test we are aiming to simulate a complete site failure. We aim to have all systems up and running in 30 minutes (that includes reloacting staff 10 miles). Something very difficult without IP.

As stated, it all comes down to how much money you want to spend (or are willing to loose if it fails!)

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004