Hello Ann Marie
I recently attended a seminar on the Future Face of the Contact Centre industry where one of the key conclusions was the perception / experience of poor customer service within the industry is one of the main challenges facing us. Post call surveys are one way of getting direct feedback on how to change this. One speaker said that implementing post-call surveys had been the single most important thing that helped improve agent performance in a large company he had worked with. We provide the post call survey solution Opinion-8, and our clients - across financial services, travel, utilities, outsourced contact centres and the public sector - report that they find it very useful in identifying where key service improvements can be made.
The discussion threads Justin and Darryl refer to raise a number of issues, on which I would like to briefly comment:
(a) Participation rates: These will vary depending on the relationship of the customer with the company and whether there is an incentive to participate. Feedback from only 5% of customers in most call centres though is enough for a representative sample.
(b) Cherry-picking: If agents are transferring callers to the survey, won’t they just 'cherry-pick' happy callers? There are several possible solutions to this. You can include an invitation to participate within the greeting message before the caller speaks to an agent, when the agent later hangs up the caller is then routed to the survey. A reminder can be then scripted into the call handling plan at the end of the call. Another option is for a set percentage of calls to be targeted with pop-ups appearing on agents’ screens for these calls, and take-up rates being monitored for each agent.
(c) Impact on agents: If it is the customer rather than the supervisor who is rating performance, the supervisor’s role changes. Instead of focusing on performance assessment, the supervisor can now focus on helping the agent to improve their customer ratings. And no agent can argue with customer feedback. Further, business processes often reduce agents' ability to deliver good customer service and agents often feel that they are between a rock and a hard place. If management take customer feedback seriously, it has the potential to make agents’ job a lot easier, and so is often welcomed by agents.
If you would like more information get in touch - we may also be able to provide some reference sites for you to visit.
Regards, Ingrid
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