Why Most Call Center Customer Service is So Bad

7/31/2019 Why Most Call Center Customer Service is So Bad

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Why Most Call Center Customer Service is So Bad?

By: Colin Taylor

We have all had the experience, we phone our cable company, wireless provider or our utility and Bang! Thepain and suffering begins: Your call is important us, Please hold. Well ifmy call was really important I would

have thought you would have answered it. Of course some hold messages can be even more frightening: Weare experiencing higher call volumes and you should expect a longer than average hold time. No I dont make

it a habit to phone my wireless provider often enough to know what their average hold time is, but I am scarednonetheless. Perhaps the standard greeting announcement should be replaced by Abandon All Hope Yea Who

Enter, a little dramatic, but perhaps more accurate.

Then when I finally reach an agent can they help me? Am I able to get done what I want to get done? The

answers to these questions often depend upon the organization and the complexity of the question I asked. Insome cases the center is quite helpful and able to provide me with the information I seek quickly, effectively,

completely and professionally, with other centers it is more like phoning the call center in those old Capital Oneads that featured David Spade. None the less research has repeatedly shown that while the quality of mercy is

not strained the quality of customer service call center often is strained. The expectation of poor service hasbecome engrained in our society. Comedians quip, television ads for Capital One and CarMax entertain us withbad service experiences and the twitterverse is alive with hundreds of thousands of people complaining about

their call center or customer service experiences- hashtags #custserv, #callcenter and #cctr. Why do so manyorganizations deliver poor service?

Research Proves Service is Bad

I would like to propose some highly intelligent and provocative explanation, but unfortunately I feel the truth is

much simpler. Companies and organizations dont care. Its not that they necessarily want to not care it is just

that they dont. There are too many other priorities and more important fish to fry. The research on this topicbacks me up: 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience,

according to Harris Interactive. That figure is closer to 73% said Gartner. American Express found that

Customer Service Experiences generally.Exceed Expectations 2%Meet Expectations 62%

Miss Expectations 32%4% werent sure!

In fact 90% of executives see Customer Service as crucial to their future business success. In the same studymore than 70% of senior call center executives revealed that their companies fail to meet their customers

expectations, according to Bain.

So we have a strange dichotomy. Organizations know that good customer service is essential to their futuresuccess; they understand that there is a real tangible cost and risk of dissatisfied customers defecting and yet

these same organizations seem incapable of affecting change.

They say that the first step to dealing with a problem is to first to admit you have a problem. Well we as the

customers of these organizations we may see the problem, as call center and customer professionals we mayrecognize the problem, but the organizations in question do not seem to recognize this. Why is that,

businesses are full of bright, knowledgeable and skilled professionals.

Is it as Dave Farrell suggests in his recent article Why Do Companies Give Bad Customer Service? We have aContrary Point of view. A point of view is simply how you view, judge or appraise things. How you see things

determines how you act. How you act determines your results. In the world of Customer Service it would looksomething like this; a customer calls in and has an issue. Lets say that I see customers as people who will lie
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through their teeth to get what they want. My point of view of the customer will determine how I act toward

them. I am much more likely to be defensive and argumentative. The customer then will deal with me howeverthey deal with defensive argumentative people. The result won't be pretty.Or perhaps as Grant Nieddu pointed out in a Linked In post Companies give bad customer service becausethey see that it is far cheaper to pay for a corporate rally and "mission review" teams than to over-haul their

tactical processes. Rewording personnel reviews, restructuring the training process, and, gasp, revisitingincentive programs is far more costly and takes more time. You can learn, execute and train a culture of

quality customer relationships, as long as you are willing to invest the time and money to do so. Companiesthat give bad customer service simply do not believe in the investment.

Both of these experts raise good points, we can certainly project our feelings and perception to others anddefine the service process from this perspective and as Grant said we certainly cant discount the fact that

some organizations are just cheap, but I think that the single biggest factor contributing to bad customerservice or as my kids would say Customer Service that Sucks, is drum roll please..wait for it neglect.

Sorry to let you down after the big build up but let me explain. There are a number of types and forms of

neglect that can lead to poor service.

Neglect Equals Bad Service

The first one I will deal with is complete neglect. This is most common in SMBs with small call centers wherethe center is not really considered as a major part of the enterprise. They are neglected, their costs andbudgets roll up into other much larger budgets like Operations, IT or Sales and senior managers and

executives do not any visibility into what is really going on in the call center nor, likely do they really care. It isneglected. Of course this can change dramatically once the call center reaches that special threshold, whose

level varies by organization, but it is when the call center actually appears as a line item on the monthly P&L.

The first time this happens you can almost hear the screams of astonishment from the executive suite, Weare spending what on the call center! In centers receiving this form of neglect they will generally be

underfunded- trying to do more with less, significantly lack appropriate technologies to serve customers and bestruggling to meet their service performance and targets. The operation of the center is usually in a vacuum,

they are disconnected from the organization and only dimly aware of the companys goals and aspirations.With insufficient staff, poor processes and technology and no vision these centers struggle day in and day outnot to deliver lousy service, but they do not often succeed. This is not good service.

The second form of neglect is neglecting to understand that a call center is a primary communications channel

between the organization and its customers. In fact for many organizations it is the primary communicationschannel and the only meaningful one that facilitates a two way discussion, a dialogue. Failing to recognize this

fact leads organizations to undervalue the contribution the call center and broader customer service andtechnical support plays in sustaining the business. Not only can a call center generate revenue through orders,

up-sell and extensions, but the call center also protects revenue already promised through solving issues andfixing problems, many of which were not caused or created by the call center. As my colleague John Cockerill

is wont to say There are only two kinds of calls; Value, where we gain revenue and Fault, where we fix aproblem someone else created. By neglecting to understand the role played by the call center in maximizing

lifetime value and customer retention these organizations treat the call center as an after- thought. The call

center discovers new campaigns and initiatives only after they launch are criticized for failing to meet patentlyunattainable goals which they had no part in creating and generally receiving all of the perks and privileges

bestowed upon it by mushroom management. It is in these centers where senior executives will ask if wereallyneed all of those people or even if we reallyneed to answer the phones at all. For the record I have

heard that exact statement on two occasions in my consulting career. In centers suffering from this form ofneglect they will be generally underfunded-trying to do more with less than none, they will often invest in

technologies to reduce costs or create efficiencies regardless of the suitability to the purpose of the center orits potential impact on customers. The operation of the center can be characterized as a cost center, in a way

that informs you that this is a very bad thing to be. There will be calls to transform the center to a profit

center, to reduce costs and to increase productivity. Of course all of these activities can be positive howeverthey are all but doomed to failure if they are not connected to the desired customer experience and the service

quality the organization wishes to deliver. With insufficient staff, poor processes and technology focused on


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reducing volumes and/or reducing transaction times these centers make it difficult for their customers and

when they get an answer they rush them off the phone. This is not good service.

The third form of neglect is complicity in these organizations the call center is acknowledged to exist, its roleappreciated and generally understood and there is an agreement on the value the center delivers to the

organization. Senior executives look at their weekly dashboard reports and might comment on the change inservice level or abandon rate. All may appear to be happy in mudville, but that is not necessarily so. The

company having invested in people and technology to equip the center to do its job and recognizing its valuereviews and scrutinizes the weekly reporting can feel that its job is done. You can almost hear them saying,

There now the call center is completed and we wont have to worry about that again. In the call center itself

this stage can be the most frustrating as it begins with such promise; spending on headcount to match thedemand, acquiring new technologies etc., but it soon grinds to halt coming face to face with the perception

that we did this (the call center) and now we are done. The conversations go along the lines of why do youneed more people, you just hired 6 last quarter, or Last year we spent X million on your techno-goodies so

you will have to make do. All of the hallmarks are there of a professional call center engaged and integratedinto the business, but it is not really so. The center likely struggles with scheduling and a disinterested and

high turnover workforce, adequate technologies give them a fighting chance, but the absence of integration tothe company vision and low level of agent experience condemns it to deliver inferior service.

It is clear from the above that neglect can take many forms and that these various forms of neglect can

handicap a call center and ensure that they deliver bad serviceservice that sucks. Success in delivering GoodCustomer Service lies in not neglecting your center but rather to paying attention to the center. Organizationshave found success by elevating the call centers role within the organization and openly discussing the role the

center plays in attracting and retaining customers. By defining the strategic plan for the call center and linkingthe call center plan to the company goals, mission and values brings everyone onto the same team andspeaking from a perspective of alignment. By equipping the center with the appropriate tools to do the job theorganization can begin to reap the rewards of this stewardship. Of course this should not be construed to

suggest that the call center should be given a blank check. Quite the contrary each desired investment in

people, or process or technology should be modeled, justified and be confirmed to be in line with the callcenter strategy and the broader goals and objectives of the business. Any requested investment that doesnt

make economic sense and/or fails to align and support the business goals must be discarded until a moresuitable and appropriate solution can be found.

There is no excuse for an organization to have poor service the cause can includes neglect, lack of funding orperhaps even projection. But if there is no excuse for bad service why hasnt somebody done someth ing aboutit?

There are likely a million reasons that have been cited by other authors, experts and pundits, but I wouldsuggest that the simplest reason is that companies dont have too improve service. We expect poor or at least

difficulty in resolving customer service issues Forrester Research found in some verticals such as computersand health insurance only 30% of consumers expected customer service to be easy. We often expect to have a

fight on our hands. If this is the view of the customer, then is it any surprise that organizations steelthemselves for the conflict with restrictive policies and penalties for changes.

The Way Forward

Of course at the same time this expectation of poor customer service creates an opportunity for thoseorganizations able to rise above the din and actually deliver superior service. They could be motivated by a

sincere and genuine wish to deliver better customer service to their customers or they may simply realize thathappier customers stay customers longer and spend more money with you.

But this can on the surface appear to be a risky strategy, to spend more money to improve the quality of

service, staff, technology and processes and then to wait and hope it pays off. But maybe it is not so risky.

Research from American Express found that 61% of Americans report that quality customer service is moreimportant to them in todays economic environment, and will spend an average of 9 percent more when they

believe a company provides excellent service.


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A few organizations are bravely marching forward carrying the Superior Customer Service banner. Some ofthese organizations have achieved fame and success others are just quietly reaping the financial benefits.Zappos has defined itself as a Customer Service organization that just happens to sell shoes and has created acult of believers. F&C has been recognized as the best call center in the UK by exceeding all service

parameters. And American Express, well it is their research cited above that tells us that customers will paymore for better service, it appears that they are walking the talk. American express derives their customer

satisfaction scores directly from their customers and this CSAT score has replaced the internally generatedquality score that they used to rely on. Satisfaction is in the eye of the customer, it is as simple as that.

So we are not forever doomed to suffer through endless IVR call trees, hours on hold only to speak with an ill-tempered and poorly trained agent. We neednt abandon all hope when we enter the customer service queue.

We must simply choose to patronize organizations that deliver superior service. Voting with our feet and ourwallets is the best way to encourage lagging organizations to cease their policies of neglect and embrace the

new maxim of better service equals more and happier customers.

Hopefully and not to far in the future companies will no longer be able to provide poor customer servicebecause they can get away with it, customer service laggards are going to be punished by the market and

forced to change their ways. At least thats what my crystal ball says.

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Why Most Call Center Customer Service is So Bad