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BE CONFIDENT YOUR CUSTOMER’S EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST
For companies seeking to make a name for themselves as a provider of quality customer service, it pays to outsource more of their quality assurance functions so they can be confident the service experienced by their customers is the best it can be.
Many companies are already reaping the benefits from outsourcing some or all of their quality assurance programs to build a robust customer-driven service strategy. The results can have a dramatic impact on brand loyalty, day-to-day marketing efforts and the long-term bottom line.
With the right partner, one that is focused on quality and not just “workforce management”, it’s possible to grow an organisation’s expertise, make change faster, improve performance and save money – all at the same time.
According to CSBA Managing Director, Mr Paul Van Veenendaal it costs an organisation the same to process a poor customer service call as it does a good one, but with the former the organisation risks alienating its customer, while the latter can lead to increased customer loyalty.
“When you start to do the sums, it is obvious that even a 10 per cent poor call rate can equate to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars a year being unnecessarily wasted,” Mr Van Veenendaal said.
“Take one of our clients as an example, where they receive, on average, 380,000 customer service calls a year. If an average call costs $30 to process, then if just 10 per cent of their phone calls are not properly handled (and the client calls back or worse goes to a competitor), they are wasting around $1.4 million a year! Not to mention the effect the poor service experience has on those customers who go and tell all their mates.
“That’s a lot of inefficiency for the business to address at a time when business is tight.”
Good analysis can help identify and resolve issues to improve these inefficient work practices.
The challenge then is to make the analysis itself cost effective.
“Companies often try and solve the problem by undertaking an internal assessment of the customer’s telephone experience,” Mr Van Veenendaal said.
“Internal assessments can be great for compliance and training purposes, but they are often not the best or cheapest way to assess the overall customer experience and ensure quality control.
According to Mr Van Veenendaal, one of the greatest misconceptions for quality control is that it is cheaper if conducted in-house.
“To undertake internal quality assurance there has to be a lot of credibility attached to the person conducting the review,” Mr Van Veenendaal explained.
“Organisations use their most highly skilled staff members to conduct the review and often these are the people who have been involved in the development of the customer service, so it can be difficult for them to be objective.
“But it is also costing the organisation in terms of downtime by taking their most highly skilled and profitable customer service employees off the front line to work behind the scenes.
“Not only do they risk having less experienced staff deal with customers in a less than desired manner, but they also have to pay for additional people to backfill the positions.
“In our experience, using an external service provider to conduct the review should cost the same, if not be cheaper, than an internal review and at the same time provides the added benefit of having an independent assessment of the customers’ point of view.
“When an organisation conducts an assessment of this nature internally they usually need a team of people to listen to the telephone calls, analyse them, interpret them and then write up the reports.”
“Even if you had a set of key modules and criteria, it is still open to personal interpretation and innuendo.
“An external provider will remove this bias and inconsistency because they will adopt an objective, standardised approach, with no vested interest in the outcome except getting to the truth.
“With a reputable external provider and an objective result, the regular report and recommendations are often more acceptable to staff, management and third party suppliers.”
How does an external Quality Assurance Provider work?
CSBA has developed an excellent model for being an external quality assurance provider. It involves four key steps.
- Understand the customer's business and criteria for a great customer service experience both internally (ie filling in the right forms) and externally (ie leaving the customer thinking what a great call!).
- Developing a program to calibrate the quality of the call to meet clients expectations.
- Providing assessments in a quick turnaround environment that can provide the agent with great feedback for the team leader to coach.
- Reviewing the results in line with Customer satisfaction results to have a program linked to what matters to customers.
A well-designed customer-driven service platform allows a company to place a dollar value on the customer service experience, enabling management to determine the exact loss or gain when customer satisfaction or loyalty declines or improves. Only when a company ties financial results to customer-satisfaction will the customer truly have a ‘seat in the boardroom’ and a meaningful place in the company’s mission statement.
To find out how CSBA can assist improve your customer call centre service quality and consistency, click HERE.
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