Customer service, contact centres, set up, improve
service, performance review, staff motivation.
Improving Customer Service and Contact
Centre Performance
Managing and enhancing customer service is
one of the most critical elements of any business. The
experience delivered is what customers think about your whole
organisation. 
An improvement project must therefore start
with an understanding of the brand you are aiming to promote and how to
first meet and then exceed the various customer expectations.
This need not be expensive. In most organisations there is an
opportunity to simplify processes, motivate staff, improve service and
exploit technology, resulting in better service at lower
cost.
Our Customer Service business is a contact
centre set-up, improvement and recovery specialist with a team of
professionals that have worked in the industry for a number of
years.
The consultants we offer include former
senior managers of companies like Cable & Wireless,
Vertex, BT, Bosch, United Utilities and also start-ups and
local contact centre operations. Hence we have the experience
to improve complex operations but also the mindset to
transform smaller lower-cost ones.
A good starting point is our one-week
performance review that identifies good practice to build on, areas for
improvement, skills to develop and how to quickly exploit previous
investments. This and other services are described below.
Fundamentally we believe that all customers
deserve a rapid, efficient, friendly service no matter who they are
speaking to. The challenge for organisations is to meet those
expectations whilst managing costs and representing the brand of their
organisation effectively – even during times of change or difficult
market conditions.
Over the last decade, few sectors have
experienced the massive growth that the call centre industry has
achieved. Latest estimates claim that there are over 18
million agents and 1.5 million managers in call centres
worldwide.
However, as many of us have experienced personally, it seems that the
customer has all too often been neglected in this fast changing
industry. The introduction of sophisticated ACD systems and
voice recognition can be a serious source of frustration when
implemented poorly or simply designed to offload some of the effort on
to the hapless customer. As for outsourcing, a recent survey
revealed that only 4% of UK customers enjoyed a good experience with an
overseas call centre. That is a surprisingly low figure as
some off-shore centres are very well run, but it illustrates the scale
of the challenge facing the industry.
One of the biggest challenges for customer
service managers is therefore how to balance the external customer
needs with constant internal pressure to reduce costs. And
that is where we can help.
The key to achieving this is, of course,
your people. We see our role as introducing new insights and
methods and making them work for you, but your own managers and staff
must share the hard work! This will ensure they have the
knowledge, tools and confidence to continue to improve the operation
long after any project has completed.
Using this approach we have delivered the
following benefits for our clients:
-
Increased levels of customer service and satisfaction ratings;
-
Reduction in customer complaints and customer attrition;
-
Increases in the conversion of sales leads and enquiries;
-
Increases in customer spend and average order values;
-
Reduction in staff attrition and low morale;
-
Improvement in operational efficiency and costs.
To achieve this, we offer a range of contact
centre services in the following areas:
Set up -
strategy to implementation: From the planning and
design through to implementation and operation – how to get the most of
out of your customer service or sales department;
People -
recruiting and e-profiling: Finding the best people
for your team – those who will fit in easily, perform well and stay –
and gaining insights into their skills, attitudes and capabilities;
Training
and coaching: Developing manager and agent
skills for higher performance, a more satisfying work place and better
careers;
Performance
measurement, improvement and troubleshooting: Creating
a balance of performance measures against which to judge performance
and then helping you improve all of them simultaneously;
Outsourcing
your operations: Helping you decide whether or when
to outsource. It could be for capacity planning, quality
improvement, cost reduction or higher sales – how to approach it, where
to site the operation and how best to avoid the pitfalls;
For Outsourcers, we can help strengthening
change management and continuous improvement capabilities, define
efficient operational strategies for multi-tenanted operations and,
with our detailed knowledge of the market, help you develop client
propositions and new services;
Exploiting
technology: Helping you exploit your investments to
date, reduce telephony costs and make innovative new technology work
for you without a large capital outlay;
Operational
reviews: Providing an independent benchmark and
prioritised actions for performance improvement, process redesign,
staff development and culture change;
Project
& interim management: Our experience made
available to you to manage your projects or teams, ensuring delivery to
time, budget, scope, quality and service levels;
Explore these further by selecting the links
on the left. Our solutions are practical and cost effective.
Our fees are simple and straightforward. Contact us to talk through
what we can do for you.
©
Touchpoint Change Consulting Ltd, 2009.
