host posted on October 01, 2007 08:54
7 Habits of Effective Contact Centers
A white paper from e-Gain is intriguingly titled “7 Habits of Effective Contact Centers.” Borrowing a theme from Steven Covey, the following suggestions are offered:
Habit 1: Be proactive – embrace change and harness the power of new technologies. Instead of just reacting to what is urgent and requires fire fighting, set aside a couple of hours each week to evaluate the overall operations of your business. Be aware of new
customer demands and business trends. Evaluate them and, if they seem important, fit them into your road map.
Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind – start with mission statements, goals, road maps and metrics. What is your organization’s mission? Do your center goals match the company’s business goals for the next 12 to 24 months? Build a road map. Create a long-term plan before investing in any new tool or initiative. A road map ensures that every purchase fits into the larger picture.
Habit 3: Put first things first – let priorities drive initiatives. To deliver excellent customer service as a contact center, you must first qualitatively define “excellent service” from the perspective of your customer. Then, let that drive your priorities.
Habit 4: Think win/win – what’s good for your customer is good for you too. Contact centers often see themselves as the first line of defense against the assault of the customer hordes on the company for service. It is easy to fall into this mode if one focuses too much on efficiency goals. Instead of thinking of a customer call as an expense, also look at a customer call as a unique opportunity to delight a customer, and a great opportunity to advise the customer about solutions and upsell. Research shows that a customer who has a problem with product, contacted the business and had their problem solved well is likely to be far more loyal to the business than someone who has
had no problems with the product ever. Make sure you are talking to your customers. Surveys and feedback tools should be part of every initiative.
Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood – know your customer. Consider a typical contact center operation. There is a constant pressure to cope with ever-increasing volume of customer contacts. In this environment, instead of listening carefully to what our customers are telling us, we can get caught up in our own charts and graphs and analysis. We can spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that we are doing a great job. Listening to customers helps us understand how to help them better.
Habit 6: Synergize – bring it all together. Clarity of purpose, shared goals and customer-oriented metrics distinguish world-class contact centers. Make sure your solutions work seamlessly.
AND Habit 7…
Sprint Fires Customers
Wireless phone service provider Sprint has shocked consumers and industry observers alike by sending contract termination letters to about 1,000 of its customers. In a time when getting out of a cell phone contract can cost hundreds of dollars, this might not seem like such a bad thing. But the customers who were “fired” were people who were the provider’s biggest complainers. “These customers were calling to a degree that we felt was excessive,” Sprint’s Roni Singleton told Reuters. The 1,000-1,200 customers accounted for 40,000 calls per month, according to Sprint.