Customer Delight through Improved Processes in

Telecom Industry

A Case Study of Pakistani Call Centers

Presentation Agenda• Abstract

• Research Methodology

• Research Limitations

• Introduction

• Ineffective and Inefficient Processes

• How To Improve the Processes

• Conclusion

AbstractIt has been observed that Pakistani Call Centers often lose projects due to poor understanding of customer expectation in terms of response, speed, innovation and consistency. This is mainly due to poorly designed processes.

Apparently customers are not satisfied with their products/services. This is because of poor training that is being provided to them by the Call Center managers. The Call Centers visibly lack various dimensions of quality. They are not adhering to any basic norms and practices of TQM in these Call Centers.

This study would review the effectiveness and user friendliness of different processes being run in a few Pakistani Call Centers. This paper aims to measure and analyze the quality of the processes so that the gaps between the current and the required processes could be identified, which in turn can induce the element of quality to achieve customer delight.

Research Methodology

The data collection is done through meetings, interviews, visiting agents, observing and analyzing old records.

Research Limitations/Implication

the study includes data of 4 to 5 Call Centers located in Islamabad. Research period for data collection and analysis is limited to 3-4 months. The paper is limited to only one process of the Call center industry and that is ‘Telemarketing’

Process Improvement brings In Customer Delight

Introduction To call Centers• Inbound Call Centers

The Customers call in and the System Prompts them for information, the call is then transferred to an appropriate person and the call is handled

• Outbound Call Centers

In this kind of Call Centers, the Call Center Employee initiates the Contact from a client or a customer list and may track the customer interaction in a specialized software program.

Processes in an outbound Call Center• Telemarketing

• Training

• Hiring

• Sales

• Accounts

• Issue escalation etc

Telemarketing

Telemarketing……. Majority of the workforce

of a call center is involved in this process. Call agents are the only resource to convince the customer in order to sell their products or services. The way a call agent behaves on the call is the only criteria for the customer to accept or reject the product. In our call centers the call agents lack many of the factors that make a successful sale in a call.

Ineffective and Inefficient Telemarketing Process• The Processes being run in the Pakistani Call centers Were

defined and were being executed but some of the attributes

of the processes were not up to the mark.• Lets Focus on the attributes of this processes that make the

process ineffective and inefficient. That is why the process lacks user friendliness. If we handle these attributes ultimately the process would improve and bring customer delight in our Telecom industry

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective Ethics• In some of the call centers the Call agents have been noticed to have rude

behaviors with the clients, especially when the customer is loose tampered the call agent’s also loose temper which they should not do. The tone of the call agent should be humble and consistent throughout the call no matter what is the response of the Customer.

Accent• Call centers here in Pakistan are mostly American, European and

Australian based. The first issue that can be noticed is that the Pakistani call agents do not have a proper accent that is reasonable to any of the customers of the above named countries. Secondly some of them speak in the accent they like, not even knowing that they are mixing many of the accents that are spoken in different continents. In Most of the call centers it can be noticed that the agents pretend to be from the same country as that of the customer. Since the accent is different, the customer feels that the agent is not from his country (which he has been told). As a result the customer loses trust and at times loses tamper as he feels being cheated and rejects the offer even if it is giving him benefits.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Intelligence

Convincing someone (who even does not know you) on the phone on the very first call is quite challenging. Certain level of intelligence is required in order to satisfy the queries of the customer. Energetic and straight forward answers are the key to make a sale. A customer would never like a dumb person talking to him who cannot even answer his basic queries. In our call centers, whoever knows to speak English is considered to be the best candidate for the post of call agent. No one even tries to know the level of intelligence he/she has.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Speed

As we all know time is very critical for everyone. No one has the time to listen for a long time to call agents. Most of the customers are educated and they get a sense that the call agent would normally be persuading them. In such a situation the customer does not like to give much time to the call agents. What our industry needs is to understand the importance of customer’s time. We should bring speed in our work. The customer who does not seem interested should be left early but ethically and the saved time can be used for other customers. Care should be taken for the customers as well as our own time.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Honesty

In the third world countries this is a common practice, the call agents hide the facts and figures from their customers, like the hidden charges. Call agents do not tell the disadvantages of the product, they only talk about the advantages of the product or the service they are selling. Even if the customer asks for facts that lead to the dark side of the product they suddenly change the topic and persuade the customers. In this scenario many of the call agents have been successful in making the sales but in the long term this approach is devastating for the name of the company. People start losing trust in the company’s products.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Loss of Customers Data

It has also been noticed that the important data of the customers like the Credit card number and its pin is often mad public between the call agents. Many of the call agents have been noticed for using customer’s credit card for their own purposes. Care should be taken about the customer’s data and it should not be used for fraudulent activities.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Failure in culture Adoption

The call agents often get confused when it comes to the culture of another nation. For example call agents have been noticed to greet either in the local style or they greet at night as if they are greeting in the morning. I.e. saying good evening when its morning in the customers country. It is noticed that certain customers talk about their customs and traditions which our call agents do not know as a result they get blank. Certain customers start talking about the cities of their own countries which are unknown to our clients; this creates a gap between the customer and the call agent

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Communication Skills

Communication skills are very important in this field, not only speaking but reading and listening is also very important. Listening to customers at times is very difficult. Different customers have different accents and some speak in a very strange accent that at times is not understandable to our local call agents. As a result confusions are created. And the correct information cannot be conveyed to the customer. Some agents are intelligent enough to use Phonetics, mostly get confused when the client is telling his address.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Lack Of Product Knowledge

The call agents selling the product need to know each and every feature of the product. Many of the agents in our industry do not have the full information of the product. And in scenarios where the customer asks the agent something the agent does not know he/she starts looking for the information which wastes time and the client hangs up.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Long Process

The process is indeed very long. First you have to convince the customer for buying your product and then there is a long process in which Client has to answer the questions asked by the Interactive voice response (IVR) machine. About 25 percent of the people drop the calls due to the long process of the IVR.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Distortion

Distortion in the call also creates a negative impact. The client gets the idea that this is not a local call, which brings about the idea that they are being manipulated. It has often been noticed that after a distortion in the call the client asks “Are you from India? Why don’t you improve your own quality?” And since our subcontinent lacks trust the client is often dissatisfied and is not interested.

Attributes making the process Inefficient and ineffective…….• Carelessness in Call Disposition

On the average an American receives about 20 calls per day in which he is being convinced by many people to buy there products. Some of the people are annoyed and request the agent to put them in the ‘Don’t call lists’ but some of the agents either mistakenly or angrily enter there number in the call back list which causes frustration to the client when he is called again for the same story of the product.

Recommendations

Improving the Hiring process• There is a need that the people who

are hired have the attitude and the aptitude to work in such environments. Hiring people on A single criteria ( Good Spoken English ) creates problems like bad attitude within the team, bad attitude with the client.

• HRM should consider the background of the employees, there psychology, etc so that they can induce long term professionals in the industry.

Training People• Call Agents must be trained

about the basic human psychology and how to be successful with the clients.

• By training, customer care can be induced in the call agents.

• Agent must be trained to be people-oriented because they are going to deal with different kinds of people. Agent must know how to delight the angry customers and Turn Customers into there Fans.

Training People………• Agents should know the right seat on

the right bus I.e. The agent must be trained to understand individual differences.

• To bring Customer delight, multi tasking should be included in the training.

• Train Agents to use phonetics

Monitoring the Calls The calls should be monitored, without monitoring it can never be known whether the performance is up to the mark or not. Each call should be monitored and should be dealt with seriously, because each call contributes to the over all impression of the company. When the call is monitored different data about the trends of the failed and successful calls can be extracted out and theses trends can be induced to the agents by the trainers. This data/ recording can also be used in the counseling process.

Counseling Call AgentsAn agent is a human and can make mistakes;

It is the supervisor that can tell why a call was not successful, he can then go to that particular agent and tell him the problem that he had in the call that can be accent, behavior or listening skills

Reward and recognitionReward and recognition are the important factors that can bring motivation in any person.

A simplest example of Recognition can be ??????

Review meetingsIt is necessary to have review meetings with the agents so that it can be known what progress has been made. And what are the areas the call centers are lacking.

ConclusionThe problems mentioned above are mainly because English is not mother language of the industry under discussion.

Cross culture environment is quite challenging for its professionals.

When all the attributes of the process discussed above are satisfied the customers would feel satisfaction and thus delight.