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Call Center Advisor

For many organizations, the sales and service interactions that their customers have with their call center representatives are the only experiences that shape their customers' satisfaction and future behaviors. The truly critical importance of these interactions has not been lost upon organizations. Regardless of whether their call center infrastructures are large or small in size, most organizations provide their call center personnel with extensive training and supervision.

Moreover, in an effort to understand if customer service standards are being maintained, and if representatives are striving to positively shape customers' experiences, most organizations have instituted extensive call monitoring programs.

Unfortunately, while monitoring customers' calls can provide internal feedback regarding customer service representatives' abilities to follow guidelines and procedures, monitoring has severe limitations. Monitoring does not provide management with an understanding of customers' post-call emotional dispositions, resultant beliefs, and behavioral intentions.

What is needed is feedback that is directly gathered from customers. Feedback that allows insightful evaluations not only of whether or not a company's policies and procedures are being closely followed, but how the actions of individual representatives, supervisors, functional areas, and call centers as a whole, are influencing the thoughts and actions of a company's most important assets, its customers.

Call Center Advisor

Call Center Advisor provides an in-depth look at customers' experiences with call center customer service representatives by soliciting feedback directly from customers. By using this direct approach, Call Center Advisor can provide accurate and detailed feedback regarding:

• Customers' experiences trying to connect with a call center representative.
• Customers' likes and dislikes regarding their experiences with IVR systems.
• Assessment of representatives' abilities, such as, product and service knowledge, courtesy, or commitment to resolve customers' issues.
• Customers' perceptions of how personnel addressed specific sales /service interactions (such as, assisting with product selections, cross-selling complementary products, or product returns).
• Confirmation of the use of key selling points or sales /service guidelines.
• Changes in customers' feelings and beliefs as a result of their call center experiences.
• Customers' stated changes in their behavioral intentions and loyalty.

When used on a periodic basis, Call Center Advisor can provide measures of how well changes in companies' policies and personnel training are impacting customers' attitudes, beliefs, and intentions.

Identifying Best Practices from Your Customers' Perspective

Are customers able to get through to customer service representatives with minimal effort, or do they find that they have to call multiple times or remain waiting much longer than they had expected? Are calls handled by the first representative a customer reaches or do many calls need to be transferred or escalated? Getting answers to questions such as these is important. But even more important, is understanding the impact of these service levels on customer satisfaction.

The solution is straightforward. Linking Call Center Advisor customer feedback with internal company call record information can allow a clear assessment of the impact of a variety of customer call metrics on customer satisfaction.

For example:

Fig.1 shows how wait times and satisfaction feedback can be graphed to illustrate the nature of the reverse relationship between wait time and customer satisfaction.

Fig. 2 illustrates how customer satisfaction may be impacted moderately when a single call back is needed to solve an issue, but can be dramatically diminished when two or more call backs are required.

Fig. 3 depicts how to determine optimum call durations for customers. The "sweet spot" appears to be between 1-2 minutes. If the call is longer, customers may feel their time is being wasted. If the call is shorter, customers may feel they are being rushed.

What is Critical to Customer Satisfaction

Call Center Advisor provides a complete understanding of the call center experience by identifying which elements of call center personnel's interactions with customers are most important in determining customers' satisfaction. That is, Call Center Advisor can provide two levels of customer satisfaction feedback: satisfaction with a customer service representative and satisfaction with the call interaction as a whole. Using both these levels of key driver information, managers can make informed assessments of their training and policy needs.

Evaluating Automated Response Systems

Finally, Call Center Advisor can provide the answers to a wide range of salient questions regarding automated response systems. How do customers feel about using automated response systems in lieu of live operators? For what types of calls are automated systems preferred or accepted versus using a live operator? Should customers have more or less menu options? Are menus simple to navigate and efficient in terms of consumer time? When is a live operator needed? When is a confirmation call-back useful? Soliciting customer feedback via Call Center Advisor can answer these questions.