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Call centers can be expensive as well as the source of lots of consumer angst. But companies can get more bang for their buck by doing a better job of coordinating marketing decisions that drive customers to call centers with operational ones about handling them once they get there, says a new study from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
The study, co-authored by Professors Philipp Afèche and Opher Baron in the Rotman School's Operations Management and Statistics Area, and Mojtaba Araghi, an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, provides an integrated marketing-operations framework to help companies design more effective service policies for their call centers and other service channels.
[...] Getting things right at the call center has been shown to be vital to businesses. Previous research has shown that companies use call centers for 80% of their customer interactions and 92% of customers base their opinion of the company on what happens during their call. Four out of ten customers who end their business with a company place the blame squarely on a customer service call that went badly.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171002112343.htm
[Source]: How much is that call worth?
[Abstract]: Customer Acquisition, Retention, and Service Access Quality:
When quarterly results matter the most, do you think that companies will follow this advice ?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by goodie on Tuesday October 03 2017, @02:47PM (1 child)
After sales support is by definition something that costs you money without bringing any money. It's a future loss avoidance process. so when you reward current profit, well people go "fuck future loss avoidance". It's the same when you buy a dishwasher, a car, or anything really. There are very few companies that care about it. Anecdotally, my experience is that when they do care, they are private companies who get to decide how they do business. My latest dishwasher is a Miele, something considered a luxury brand for appliances in NA. These guys don't even trust the delivery company hired by the store. The store places an order on the Miele B2B website, the Miele truck delivers and unpacks the item and they do the after sales service. and guess what? When you call, you get through them, quickly and effectively.
Most other companies (like my previous Kichenaid which we changed before the end of the extended warranty) rely on outsourcing service so it's effectively about saving as much as you can.
When I changed cell phones about 6 months ago, I went to a store with my current provider (been with them for 15 years...). You'd think they would try to treat like somebody they want to keep. Nope. I got the same BS talk about having to fund my phone by upgrading to a plan I did not want or spit hundreds of $ for a regular smartphone. I went to another provider. Next day I get a phone call from my now old provider's customer care center asking me why I had changed and if there was anything they could do to make me go back. I told them it was too late and I told them to shove it, that reacting after the fact was probably the worst thing they could do. If I were driven by the idea of saving a buck everywhere I go, I would have bargained for a deal and gone back. But screw it, I voted with my wallet.
And don't get me started on Bell Canada who keeps on offering these "great deals" for their fibe service. Thank you but no. I have lost countless hours with you in the past, so I will never be your customer again (at least not willingly).
(Score: 4, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:10PM
Nope. After sales done properly is sales. I know because I work both sales AND aftersales for a company that makes products used in a major aftersales industry. Dawg.
Step 1: Make reliable products. If your product / service works well most of the time, people will give you some slack when it fails.
Step 2: Allow your staff to be themselves. No customer wants to talk to a robot, no employee wants to be reduced to a goddamned script. Let people have real conversations, in their own time.
Step 3: Get decent, intelligent people, train them well and expose them to more than just their tiny corner of the business, so they have a good knowledge of not only how the product works, but how your business works. Where possible take them out to customer sites to see the product being used "in the wild". If your staff know the product and understand the customer's needs, they will give better support. They will also be able to sell. Furthermore they can educate and train customers - half of your support calls are going to be simple user error / didn't RTFM. If you take the time to train your customers not to break shit rather than simply cleaning up after them and waiting for the same problem from the same customer in two weeks' time, you are going to reduce incoming calls, making more time for the customers who really need you.
Step 4: Retain your people. Half of this is finding people who are more interested in job security than chasing the next big pay rise. The other half is paying them well and looking after them. Customers love it if they call and ask for the guy that helped them 2 years ago and he's still there. Bonus points if the guy remembers the customer. Building relationships with your customers is everything.
Step 5: Make Customer Satisfaction your main metric. Don't obsess over time per call or calls per agent or any shit like that. Is the customer happy? Yes? Good, well done. This is obviously good for customer satisfaction, but also staff satisfaction. We are social animals, and helping people makes us feel good. Your staff will leave the office at the end of their shift with smiles on their faces. Also, don't freak out if one of your guys helps the customer by suggesting a way for the customer to reduce his bill - that same customer will trust him 6 months later when he suggests upgrading to a more expensive product.
Step 6: Give your people the tools and the slack they need to make things right for the customer. "Oh I'm sorry sir, we screwed up badly there. I can authorise a week's free subscription to make up for it." "I can't get it working for you straight away, but here's a temporary replacement until we do." Customers should never hear "There's nothing I can do" or "Computer Says No." Make it right for the customer, somehow.
Step 7: Documentation. FAQs. Support ticketing systems. Use them and keep them up to date. Get your staff to use them and keep them up to date. Not because you'll whip them if they don't, but because your staff want to help people (See step 5) and you convinced them that these tools will enable them to help more effectively.
All this sounds expensive, but it pays dividends. For one thing, you'll find that a small, well-paid, well-trained, experienced team of aftersales folk can support as many customers as a much larger team of transitory, demotivated scriptmonkeys. Pay for quality and you won't have to pay for quantity, and you'll have much happier customers. And happy customers, of course are loyal customers. Repeat customers. Also, in this age of social media, reputation means a lot. People talk, and a happy customer is an unpaid salesman.
What's more, aftersales staff who have a good relationship with the customers, understand their needs and also know their own products are in a perfect position to sell. You barely even have to tell them to do it! Your team will want to help people, and if helping them means moving them on to a newer / better product, or selling them something extra, then they will naturally suggest it and the customer will listen.