Nobody sets out to deliver bad customer service
Quality monitoring, call routing and speech recognition: technology that has been successfully deployed to improve productivity and optimise performance in contact centres. It’s fair to say that on the whole these innovations have helped to improve effectiveness, and I’d continue to encourage businesses to investigate performance management and see how rewarding positive behaviour in their call centres can deliver real benefits.
As a result, many contact centres’ internal operations are now more efficient and their marketing managers all have plenty of PowerPoint slides to show just how much they’ve improved customer satisfaction. However, has all this internal quality focus really filtered through to the customer? I think there’s still a big gulf between many companies’ perception of the quality of service they’re providing, and in how the customer actually feels. Quite often organisations are still getting the psychology all wrong.
Nobody sets out to deliver bad customer service, it’s just that we sometimes let the technology get in the way of the customer. I firmly believe it’s important for organisations to focus on the psychology of customer engagement. And just because you may have automated many of your customer interactions using IVR and speech systems doesn’t excuse you – indeed it makes considering the customer even more important!
Importance of User-Centred Design
Using the latest speech technologies – along with a user-centred design approach – it’s now possible for organisations to deploy automated solutions that really can improve levels of caller satisfaction. However, it’s also possible to get it badly wrong.
Before beginning any application design, I believe it’s essential that organisations ask some basic questions first. You can divide these questions into three key areas:
- Who’s the customer, where are they calling from and what do they know already
- What are they calling about today – knowing what they’ve called about before can help, and
- What’s likely to be important to the customer on this call
Once you’ve started to think about the answers to these questions, then you’ve a far greater chance of designing a customer-focused application that will actually help your customers and make them feel good about doing business with your organisation.
Take the first group of questions. As a customer I like to feel valued. If a contact centre – whether live or automated – can quickly identify me as a customer, and recognise where I’m calling from then at least I feel acknowledged – and that’s a positive! If, for example, I’m placing a call from a factory floor then a sophisticated speech application is never going to work well. Similarly, if I’m a premier banking customer or hold a platinum card then I don’t want to just join a lengthy call queue – my customer ID should get me straight to the front!
The next stage is to start to associate my voice or PIN ID with the records from the calls that I’ve made before. If you can track the last three calls I made, then it’s quite possible to build a profile and present me with an automated application that is more attuned to my current requirements. At the same time, if my last three calls were all simple balance enquiries with my bank, then I don’t need a live agent or a complex speech application. Instead I’d probably be better off with a standard, well-designed IVR solution that can give me the information I need quickly and easily.
Clearly such approaches will involve a mix of technologies, from CRM and ACD systems to the latest voice ID recognition and speech applications. However, all the best technology won’t do the job well unless you can really get a handle on why your customers are calling. From a psychology perspective, this means focusing on what’s likely to be important today for the customer calling your contact centre.
So put yourself in their shoes at the early design stage. And remember some key guidelines – for example, they won’t care about any productivity targets you may have set – instead they’re always going to be far more focused on resolving their problems – ideally on the first call. It’s also worth remembering that there are two sides to every call – for you it may be a late payment call, but it’s just an invoice query to the customer.
Clearly different customers have different priorities, and typical linear call dialogue structures don’t always take account of these. If I’m a student booking a flight to Ibiza then cost is probably going to be a key criteria. A business traveller, however, needs to be in Dusseldorf by 10am, and the price is less important than availability.
Spotting who’s calling and why should trigger different call designs for these two customers. Each stage should reward the caller with clear signals of progress, and you can only do that if you know what people want!
Today’s most successful voice self-service applications are those that are designed around caller needs. And remember to thoroughly test your applications – just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it’ll work. So also look to carry out serious usability testing – and not just as a rubber stamp, we really do have to listen and act on customer feedback.
Also when the project’s rolled out, don’t stop there. Companies need a real commitment to continuous improvement if they’re going to really get under the bonnet and find out what customers are really up to!
