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Why Your Call Center is Only Getting Noisier (mckinsey.com)
From a report by research firm McKinsey & Company: Organizations have been investing in all manner of customer-facing technology solutions to replace live calls. Of all operational call-center technologies, digital solutions were ranked as one of the most important over the next five years by four out of five executives. Only agent desktop tools ranked higher. These technologies begin with websites, chat bots, and apps and extend to artificial-intelligence robots that simulate human conversations -- redefining the way organizations interact with customers -- as well as more tried-and-tested functionalities such as improved web, app, or self-service capabilities in interactive voice-response (IVR) systems. And yet, despite this plethora of technology solutions, we see that calls are not going away and instead are catching call-center executives off guard in their efforts to reduce volumes. It's not that a spike in call volumes is necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, the proliferation of digital tools can awaken previously dormant customers, sparking new inquiries from an engaged customer base. But in many instances, we've also observed that the volumes of unwanted calls exceed what would be expected during a learning period, or remain constant or rise over time, defeating strategic goals and leaving managers bewildered and unable to tie tech investments to improved operational outcomes. Why are so many organizations struggling with reaping the full benefits from these investments? In our experience, the answer often lies in two core areas. First, as companies turn to technology to address call-center volumes, they allow customer experience to take a back seat to digital technology in their operations, creating dissonance in direct customer interaction, where the objective is harmony and efficiency. Second, by counting on technology to solve their call-center issues, executives lose focus on core operations and upset the balance between human interaction and automation in an era of evolved customer service.
I'm not sure I understand what the problem / issue is.
Seriously... WTF is this. More slashvertising?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
It solves one thing: It makes the customer go away.
This is a primary goal for many businesses - provide the facade of providing customer service, while actually telling them to go frak themselves.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The best customers are the ones who never call.
Why bother keeping your worst customers?
That's good because chat bots aren't there to solve your problem either.
They're all there to make you go away; you gave them your money, and they want to keep as much as possible. That's only possible if you piss off.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I've yet to encounter a trouble-shooting AI bot. Can anyone recommend a registration-free instance so I can kick the tires? Preferably, a reasonably good one, if that's even possible.
Table-ized A.I.
Don't worry, their live human won't be able to help you either, as they're really just reading off a script at this point with no ability to deviate from it.
If you're lucky, the 3rd or 4th tier above them will be able to actually deviate from the script and provide actual support. You know, the kind you used to get from the first person who answered the phone.
Hello? My broom just broke after a dozen sweeps.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
#DeleteFacebook
ISP jerked me around for weeks reseting my modem which showed noisy / lossy line. Then they made me drive to an office of theirs to switch modems, new modem had same problem as old modem of course. Finally I posted on newly created twitter account with just the right hashtag to put my tweet in stream with their marketing spew, and presto, tech came and ran a new line (old one chewed up by squirrels) within 48 hours.
So now you know what to do.....
This is something middle management is really concerned about. /. is mostly middle managers by now since most of us where forced out of tech by the influx of cheap Visas forced us to move on from the nuts and bolts of tech and into management. Automating work done by call centers is the new hotness right now for tech managers.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How about when you direct people to your web page to try and solve their issue, you give them useful information.
One can use Microsoft as a prime example of the hoops one has to jump through to find a simple solution. If the question is, "How do I add a mailbox to Outlook?", the page should not start with:
A shared mailbox can be a practical solution for any business with groups of people working from different locations. With the right permissions, any person in a group can access a shared mailbox that appears in their address book. The shared mailbox is automatically available in the Folder pane in Outlook. (taken directly from the Microsoft page)
No one cares about a "practical solution". They want to know how to add a mailbox to Outlook. Nor do they care about why one should use a shared mailbox. They asked how to add a mailbox. In fact, nowhere on the page does it tell you how to add a mailbox. It does everything but that.
If you want your call center volume to go down, provide useful information, information which is not buried ten menus deep or stuck in some corner with an obscure name.
You know why people keep calling you? Because your information pages technology sucks. That's why.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I read that painfully bloated article, and it is very simple.
Either are buying tech to solve the wrong problems, or they are not updating processes across the enterprise when new tech is deployed.
This is not news. People have been doing this before I entered the workforce, and they will probably continue to do it long after I am dust.
And then there is this gem:
"It is no surprise, then, that more than 60 percent of customer-care leaders we surveyed are skeptical about eliminating inbound voice calls in the next ten years."
I would be skeptical about eliminating voice calls in my lifetime. Who seriously thinks this is within arms' reach?
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The best company is one that never calls you. Why bother buying from the worst companies?
Was his name BeauHD or EditorDavid?
Headline: Why Your Call Center is Only Getting Noisier
Summary: It's not that a spike in call volumes is necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, the proliferation of digital tools can awaken previously dormant customers, sparking new inquiries from an engaged customer base. ... [I]n many instances, we've also observed that the volumes of unwanted calls exceed what would be expected during a learning period, or remain constant or rise over time...
msmash, you _do_ know that there are _three_ definitions for "volume", right?
It will certainly make me go away. I tend to give my money to places that have better customer service, when possible.
I almost always buy RAM from Mushkin. Back when they sold direct, they actually had a real live person answer their phone. On top of that, they were very easy to understand, and actually knew what they were talking about. Even if/when they were the more expensive option, they always got my money.
If my choice is to pay a little more for a product from a business that has pleasant people who know what they're talking about, or pay less and deal with an automated system, or a company that will (maybe) call me back in a couple of days. I'll pay more money to the company with better service almost every time. Unfortunately in many cases, there is no company that has good customer service for the product I'm looking for.
Thanks to those modern cost saving measures, most now know to try solving the problem themselves first, with web searches and trial by error. As a result, by the time they call, they are desperate and no automated chatbot or menu will help them. In fact they increase frustration because the goal at that point is to talk to a more knowledgeable human.
Yeah. First you get customer service, then support help level 1 and then they transfer you to level 2 whose calls are routed to what I firmly believe is the level 1 guys again but with the hope that the next level 1 guy is a bit more knowledgeable through outside skills. Then you get told it will cost you 100 to send someone out to your house as they no longer have level 3 help. At this point, I have usually found the answer via google or one of those youtube videos (which I used to swear against but now appreciate.)
I used to work on an ISP help desk many, many years ago. If you asked to escalate to a manager or a higher level of support we would quite literally put you on hold, look around the room and ask our co-workers who felt like being a "manager" today, we'd then transfer the person to our co-worker who was at the same level as we were.
Of course this was back in a time when we didn't work off scripts, and were hired for our extensive knowledge of the systems and software we were supporting. If we couldn't figure it out, there simply wasn't anyone higher up to send you to.
Things are very different today, I don't think there are any call centres left where the first level people do anything other than follow a script, and it's highly unlikely any of them were hired for their in depth technical knowledge.
We do the same once they reach a high enough level where I work.
It's pretty much if there is nothing we can do, then there really is nothing we can do.
The problem is that so many companies put people that are not empowered on the front lines that customers expect to be able to hear a yes after being told no if they climb high enough. If there weren't so many fake no's being told, this wouldn't happen but I imagine it does weed out probably 8-90 percent of complainers.
I thought this was about background sounds from call center calls. :/
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
That's true. And as a customer, I take that to heart. If the business can't be bothered to provide reasonable customer support, and just wants me to go away, I will -- to a competitor.
I've stuck with some vendors simply because when I call their tech support, a knowledgeable, articulate human being answers. And I've dropped vendors who make it unreasonably difficult to talk to a knowledgeable support person when necessary. If only upper management wouldn't continue to trap us in long term contracts with vendors who don't give a crap. They do it because it's our job to wrestle with the consequences of their decisions.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is exactly why I am now a big fan of Dell's enterprise support. US-based call centers, follow-up calls, 24x7 support, etc. Once I spent 22 hours on a call while they rebuilt three virtual machines by "hand" (since we were still using 5.5), that day the warranty "paid for itself". We eventually ended up with someone in India for the high-level ESXi support but still, the tech really knew his craft. I was sad when Dell sold off Sonicwall, but so far Sonicwall support still seems pretty decent.
Maybe you should dust off your old phreaking skills, or use an app like ToneDef on your Android phone? Not that you should "have to" use some specialized app jist to navigate a system like that...
This sounds like a failure of the vendor's system; I've used dozens of support systems with various Android phones and never had that issue.
I cut my teeth doing ISP support for the ricochet wireless modem in the 90's, and I saw first hand how support was regarded by the C level execs.
We all started out with normal, 10x10 cubicles. Then they wanted to pack more people into the space, so they reduced us to 2 per cube. Then they wanted to reduce that even further, and put us all in individual wall stations that were about 1' deep by 2' wide. After that job, I started seeing this become the norm for most support departments.
So in short, they increased the floor density of call centers, which made the noise worse.
I meant an online product support chat-bot, not a physical bot like R2D2.
Table-ized A.I.
Was that summary even in English? EXAMPLE:
The example clause has absolutely no actual meaning. None, whatsoever.
Thing is. This wasn't "high enough level" this was the front line. We were the first, last, and only level of support.