Win win for Customers and Service Providers
My earlier blog Convergence: The Customer Perspective focused on an in-depth analysis on the market.
As I sat pondering on my phone call to the customer service department – in the context of the focus on CRM, I felt two interesting trends emerging.
From the past of having multiple steps in the process of reaching a customer agent, slowly the scene seems to be changing – calls are picked up directly by the call center agent. Have found it to be happening more often than usual and as a user am pleasantly surprised.
Another very interesting aspect, is the ability of the call center agents to provide a complaint reference number. What this has done to consumers like me is that in case of the first call resolution not existing, there is always a path forward where I can know the status of my request and also do not have to really wait for the new operator to be told the entire story.
How do these two things help the process of CRM:
1. If I encounter two call centres, one where calls are picked directly by the call centre agent, and the other which forces me to wait – I will definitely go for the one with an immediate response and resolution. And knowing the experience will tend to buy from a service provider which will give me a quick response. For the service provider, this may mean additional call center agents but this also challenges them to improve their services and would directly see the impact vis a vis the call volume.
2. The second is logging of a formal request – the service provider can actually analyze multiple metrics around this call, categorize them, analyze them and over a period of time determine the root fix of the problem which hampers majority of the customers.
This forces me to think on a question – most of the customers only call a call center in case of a problem resolution. Suppose someone calls back with a positive experience, what is the impact on the cost and does it/should it be tracked and to what extent? How best can this information be used in the win win context of CRM?
Comments
As far as I am aware, mainly customers those who interact online/web get reference numbers, for the query/issue raised, to help customers to track their query and get the quick resolution.
Of course in my opinion no company would want to keep customer waiting for resolution which in turn would lead to customer dissatisfaction and their business, I am sure companies are well aware of this. But if there is no quick resolution, then support team has to take closure with these reference nos. I don't think this additional tracking/ticket management would be an additional cost but will be effective CRM.
Also I don't think there will be too much impact on cost and even if it is, it will be marginal as the infrastructure is already there to support customer.
Personally, I would be happy if my issue/question is answered with my satisfaction with proper justification and communication, even if it’s acceptably delayed.
Posted by: Suhas | July 24, 2009 4:06 AM
Thanks Suhas for sharing your valid view points. Like you rightly mentioned, the key will be to ensure that the customers get the right solution which will make it a win-win for both the customer and the provider.
Posted by: Ravi | August 5, 2009 9:39 AM