CMC Focus On... Call Centres - Part 1

Hanging on the telephone

Regular readers of CMC will not be surprised to know that I approached this particular 'Focus On...' with a degree of trepidation. We don’t get on, call centres and me. It’s temperament, I suppose. I just don’t have the patience for them. Life’s too short to navigate an IVR menu! Just let me talk to a human being!

Of course the upside – the inadvertent upside – of the bad experiences means that the occasional good experience shines like a beacon in the night. For every Barclays, Apple Computer and 3 Mobile, there are firms like Virgin Atlantic, NatWest and Marks & Spencer showing how it should be done.

But contact centres are such a fundamental plank of today’s business life that we’ve had to break this 'Focus On...' into two sections. This first one looks at the business context and some of the management drivers behind setting up and running call centres; the second – to be published next week – will look at the technologies that run call centres and some examples of good practice.

Meanwhile, please hold for one of our specialists...

Stuart Lauchlan
News & Analysis Editor
stuart.lauchlan@mycustomer.com

All our advisers are busy...

Four out of five of us have come into contact with a call centre over the past twelve months, according to pollsters MORI. Perhaps the only surprising element of that finding is that somehow one in five of us has managed to avoid coming into contact with a call centre: what's their trick?

The research was carried out on behalf of the Citizens Advice Bureau, which concluded that the results indicated that call centres don’t work well for people trying to resolve complex problems, those who don't have easy telephone access, and those who have learning disabilities or who don’t speak English.

"The use of call centres is a fact of modern living. They can offer significant benefits if consumers can deal with matters on the phone at a time that suits them. But they are not the answer for everyone," said Citizens Advice Chief Executive David Harker. "There is a long way to go to achieve a balance between dealing efficiently with high volumes of calls and providing accessible and responsive services.

"Almost all call centre users have criticisms of their experience and a significant proportion are left dissatisfied. Critical problems about money, debts and benefits, often affecting people on very low incomes, simply are not getting resolved as quickly as they should be. Call centres should be an effective gateway to services and problem resolution – not a barrier."

According to MORI, nearly all call centre users - some 97 per cent – cite some criticism of their experiences, ranging from the prolonged nature of the calls through being routed through complicated response systems to being presented with too many automated options.

Call centres operated by financial institutions and utilities companies are the most widely used services with around half the public having recently contacted each - 56 per cent and 45 per cent - while around a quarter have used the call centres of government agencies - 27 per cent - and retailers - 24 per cent - in the past year.

Satisfaction tends to be highest with those call centres operated by industries traditionally dependent on delivering good customer service, such as retailers' call centres whereas call centres operated by utilities companies are seen to be least customer-friendly. – Significantly it’s only relatively recently that the utilities have faced the same levels of competition -

Of course the biggest cliché in the call centre industry is complaints related to the outsourcing of call centre functions to offshore locations, most notably in India. Urban myths abound of people complaining that the operators’ accents are too thick or that they don’t know enough about elements of UK business and culture. There is sadly some truth in this. One notable example experienced by this writer lately was calling the Brighton telephone number for American Express – based about 2 streets away from my home! – and having the phone answered by a someone with an Indian accent who had to ask how to spell Brighton!

In fact while there has clearly been a pursuit of the cost savings on offer by moving call centre operations offshore, the supposed tidal wave of job losses has perhaps not been as marked as it might initially appear. For example, in the financial services sector - supposedly leading the charge offshore - a survey of 23 call centres by Best Practices LLC found that only 17 per cent expect their level of offshoring to increase over the next five years.

Overall UK employment in the sector is 800,000 and still growing and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) forecasts that it will reach one million by 2008. The industry has grown by 250 per cent in the UK since 1995, said the DTI which argues that the sector is "healthy" and will employ four times as many workers as India by 2007.

Certain parts of the UK are currently enjoying something of a call centre jobs boom - indeed some suggest there is a problem in attracting staff in some areas. For example, Glasgow has been pitching pretty fiercely for firms to set up shop there – although recent allegations about crime in the city’s call centre community will not reassure prospects much.

One in 10 of Glasgow's financial call centres has been infiltrated by criminal gangs, police believe. The scam works by planting staff inside offices or by forcing current employees to provide sensitive customer details. The information is then used to steal identities and fraudulently set up accounts or transfer money.

"We have 300-plus call centres in the Glasgow areas, and we know that number is growing," said Detective Chief Inspector Derek Robertson of Strathclyde Police. "I would say approximately 10 per cent have been infiltrated in the past and we are working very hard to reduce that number."

But there are still firms that have faith in UK call centre operations. The UK’s biggest building society Nationwide is expanding its call centres in the UK where it employs some 800 people in centres at Swindon and Northampton. These will be refurbished to make them better environments in which to work, while the company also plans to open a new centre in Sheffield employing up to 180 people. "Call centres abroad may suit some of our competitors but they are not the right option for Nationwide," said Philip Williamson, Nationwide's chief executive.

So, there’s still a home-grown call centre industry, albeit one that is not delivering customer service to it’s the end-client. So how do firms go about deploying an effective call centre strategy? In the second half of this special, we’ll look at some of the technology options that are open to companies, but for now let’s look at some HR and management considerations.

For a start – and a pretty obvious start it is too – how do you plan to run your call centre? Will it be a good place to work? If it isn’t, how can you expect your staff to perform well on your behalf? And remember, they are the frontline of your company in this case, the touchpoint against which your customers will judge you.

Poor customer service is still the primary reason that consumers switch service providers, at least according to a recent study from consultancy Accenture. The study was conducted amongst consumers in the US and the UK. More than 50 per cent of more than 1,000 UK consumers surveyed said poor service had led them to change service providers in at least one industry in the past year.

"These findings are troubling for any industry with heavy customer interaction, given that poor service was the predominant reason that half of the respondents gave for changing service providers in one industry or another last year," according to John Freeland, global managing partner of Accenture’s Customer Relationship Management practice.

Asked what were the most frustrating aspects of interacting with customer service representatives, the UK respondents in the survey said that being kept on hold too long was the primary frustration, (82 per cent).

The survey found that the average consumer in the UK spends an average of nearly six minutes on hold. After waiting on hold, needing to repeat the same information to multiple service representatives was the second most frustrating aspect, (77 per cent), followed by not getting the answers they needed to solve their problems, (70 per cent). When seeking assistance via a telephone helpline, respondents said they needed to speak to, on average, 2.7 service representatives to resolve issues.

So, clearly, you need to make sure that help desks and customer sales and support centres are adequately staffed and then to make sure that the staff are sufficiently skilled to deal with the variety of requests they will receive. Finally they need to make sure that the overall systems behind the service have the sophistication to solve problems.

Indeed while technology and new innovations can help, the emphasis should remain on staff, according to research firm Datamonitor which points out that over 95 percent of contact centre customer interaction occurs over the phone.

That means you need good people on the end of the line. They’re not battery chickens in a cage. They can’t just read from a script, the primary requirement for hiring them being an ability to intone words that are pre-scripted. Operators in call centres are knowledge workers, because they carry out any activity by manipulating internal and external knowledge. Think of them that way rather than as switchboard operators and it’s clear you need a different skills set than merely the ability to pick up the phone.

According to the DTI report cited earlier, the typical call centre worker is female, in her mid to late 20s, with pay ranging from £12,000 for new starters to £27,000 for managers. Despite perceptions of high turnover, the average length of service in a call centre job is 2 years 8 months.

But while call centres are famously seen as good places to work in places such as India, in the UK, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) famously described working conditions in some call centres as akin to Victorian ‘dark satanic mills’. The HSE also found that the proportion of call handlers at risk of mental health problems is much higher than for all other benchmark occupations.

A study by Aston University in Birmingham showed employees who were forced to repeat exhaustive scripts and stick to maximum call durations were more likely to go sick or leave their jobs than colleagues in less performance-driven jobs. In particular it found that absenteeism was rife in companies using highly controlled, mechanised systems.

Make sure all contact centre staff are appropriately trained, well motivated, properly rewarded and encouraged to be good communicators focused on clients needs. That means you need to invest money in them, not regard them as cheap labour to act as the first line of defence against your customers. Average starting salaries in call centres are below £14,000, well below the national average of £24,000, while the average starting salary of a team leader is around £17,000.

But staffing is only one consideration. Make sure you’ve asked yourself some very basic questions. Do you know what you’re doing – and why you’re doing it? Make your objectives clear in a carefully considered business case - allocating adequate resources and realistic timings - that is then shared with the relevant stakeholders. Define the remit of your proposed service and ensuring it will not operate in isolation from other customer-facing touch points such as sales and marketing.

Think about the nature of your business, how it ebbs and flows. Consider the nature of the demand and determine your ability to track, predict and respond to fluctuations. Then translate that level of demand into an appropriate balance of people, processes and systems.

And think long term. Create a roadmap document before investing any money. This roadmap means you’re all heading in the same direction and that every pound/euro/dollar spent is part of a bigger picture. Do you have a vision of your customer interaction hub? If you don’t, then how do you expect to be able to add new channels and services that will fit. Tactical initiatives may be necessary in certain circumstances, but a strategic framework is critical.

Above all, think about your customers. What will they want of your call centre. Is your client base savvy enough to want to interact with you via Blackberry devices? Or digital TV? Or web sites? Will they manage to navigate that hugely expensive IVR system you’ve just installed? Or would they prefer just to talk to someone human on the telephone?

Beware of imposing metrics on your agents that result in them being so keen to get off the phone to hit their targets that the customer is going to feel that they’ve been rushed away. If you don’t think about call centres as a chance to interact with your customers rather than a way of keeping them at arms length, then their failure is essentially assured.

Useful Links

Customer Contact Association – www.cca.org.uk
The CCA is the professional body for the call and contact centre industry. An independent organisation with over 600 public and private sector members, it promotes best practice and professional development through a wide range of benefits and services.

Call Centres Management Association – www.ccma.org.uk
CCMA is the professional association for call centre managers and supervisors. Although based in the UK there are member throughout Europe and in the Middle East. Its mission is to promote the profession of call centre management and contribute to the continuous professional development of call centre managers and supervisors.

ECCCO – European Confederation of Contact Centre Associations – www.eccco.org
ECCCO - the European Confederation of Contact Centre Organisations - was formed in 2002 and represents contact centre organisations in countries across Europe. The purpose of ECCCO is to encourage and assist in the development of European National Contact Centre Associations, by bringing together all the European National Associations / Organisations, fostering free and frank information exchange on issues relating to call centre services, and using their combined voice to influence.

Further reading

To be continued...