Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Customer service at call center

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Customer service at call center

I call the call center of an airline in Singapore. I was put on hold for more than 15 minutes. I gave up waiting - as I do not know how long more I have to wait.

When I was in Cambodia, I call the hotline of a mobile operator. The automated message said, "You are now the 6th caller on the queue. As this message gets repeated, the number keeps dropping. I was answered within a few minutes. We have to learn from Cambodia about the use of technology and customer service.

5 comments:

Singapore's 5 Minute Investment Diary said...: Dear Mr Tan
I share your concern about the competitiveness and service levels of our companies.

These are simple but effective things that delight customers.

I put the cause down to;
a)downsizing of the middle management layer

b)Squeezing the salaries of the front-line staff. And so-called on-the-job training which really means no training.

All this to save money so as to be able to pay senior management with higher salaries.

I came from a generation of managers which believed in creating higher profits with superior products and service. Service and loyalty to customers were guiding principles.

I am tired of seeing present day leadership "create value" by short-changing their employees and customers by cutting costs and reducing value.

I better stop here before I turn this into a rant.

Respectfully yours.; April 05, 2011 1:32 PM
symmetrix said...: Agreed. We can go even better than Cambodia by stating the estimated wait time before the call will be answered. The system can calculate the total call duration time for all successfully completed calls, and hence derive the average. The caller can than make an informed judgement whether to hold on or drop the call.; April 05, 2011 2:11 PM
Tan Choon Hong said...: That this emergent nation can punch above its weight is a wakeup call to those overpaid govt officials in our midst. Perhaps we can tap this foreign talent and prune some of our deadwood to pay for it.; April 05, 2011 9:12 PM
ron said...: The CPF uses a similar system.
Your wait is monitored and it updates your position in queue.

Try it.. its free!; April 06, 2011 2:44 PM
Doug Casterton said...: We looked to implement this technology in the firm I worked back in the UK. Whilst the technology is an excellent piece of kit and certainly can have its benefit’s in managing customer experience during peaks of call volumes, it solves a problem that should not exist in the first place. It also does not provide a solution to the root cause of the problem. The heart of the issue is that there is not enough staff resource available to meet customer demand in the first place. A good standard of contact centre service level is to aim to answer roughly 80% of its customers within 20 seconds. So whilst I agree it can have its uses during peak times you must first get your staff resourcing correct, otherwise it can do more harm than good. In addition some of the feedback we received through our pilot was that the technology was of little benefit to customer experience unless used to inform the customer how long they had to wait rather than where they were in the queue. For example in a large contact centre having 50, 60 or even hundreds of customers waiting is not really a bad thing as long as they get answered within a reasonable time period to keep the customer happy. However looking to forecast time in a queue can be very difficult unless you have a very simple type of call and a consistent amount of talk time per call. Imagine telling a customer you will be 10 minutes when actually because there has been an influx of complex calls it taking longer to complete calls and therefore they actually don’t get answered for 30 minutes. One feature it did have that I really liked but never got to see in action, was its ability to automatically book a time for a call back with the customer for a period that was less busy. However again you must first get your staff resource right in order to make this work. Sorry I realise I have sidetracked the conversation, as I know your main point was regarding technology and Cambodia I just wanted to share some of my experiences in using this technology. Getting staff resourcing correct is often the last thing that is considered by companies but unusually the root of all evil when it comes to customer experience in contact centres.; April 08, 2011 3:56 PM