Don’t Take Calls, Make Contact

I recently audited the customer call center operated by one of the largest U.S. airlines, and I was dumbstruck by what I found. The center’s “Platinum” line, dedicated to the airline’s best customers, automatically disconnected callers who had been on hold for 59 minutes. When I asked the manager why the system had been programmed that way, he sheepishly admitted that his compensation was based on the average time required to handle customers’ calls—including the time they spent on hold—and hanging up on callers was the only way to hit his targets. Moreover, he explained, customers who spent an hour on hold were always incensed, and the agents wanted to avoid talking with them. This is a particularly dramatic example of how call centers can alienate customers, but it is by no means an isolated one. Almost every call center strives to process inquiries and complaints as quickly as possible—efficiency is often tracked on big electronic boards visible to all the agents—but few centers make any attempt to deepen relationships with customers or to gather ideas from them. By stressing speed over service, the centers virtually guarantee that they’ll end up annoying customers instead of helping them. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The following four principles can make call centers true sources of business value. By stressing speed over service, call centers virtually guarantee that they’ll end up annoying customers instead of helping them. Move the call center to headquarters. Companies usually place their call centers in distant locales where labor rates are cheap. Not surprisingly, the centers receive little management attention. Agents who feel that they’re part of a company, however, take more pride in their jobs, treat customers better, and stay in their jobs longer. A company that locates its call center within corporate headquarters, even if the overhead costs are much higher, underscores the importance it places on customer relations. At EMC, the data storage company, the customer help desk is just steps away from the office of the vice president of products. By placing the center close to its research and development team, EMC shows its employees—and visiting customers—how crucial customer concerns are to the organization. Turn gatekeepers into idea hunters. Customers know your products so well that they can often inspire your company’s next big idea, and your call center agents are ideally situated to spot innovative ideas. To create and reinforce a culture of idea hunting, offer a “bounty” for new ideas. Or use agents to survey customers as part of a market research program, thus training them to probe for ideas. You’ll also need to let people throughout the organization know that your call center staff is contributing in important new ways. You might, for example, use customer recordings in decision-making meetings or publicize how ideas from customers have led to changes in business processes or product strategies. You should also think about formally exposing your top managers to your call center. At Brazilian airline TAM, executives take turns acting as call center agents. This practice has broken down the traditional barriers between managers and agents, and agents now feel comfortable sharing customer ideas with higher-ups. Keep talking. Agents should be rewarded for pleasing customers, not for pushing them off the phone. After all, every minute you talk to your customers is one minute less they can talk to your competition. At TAM’s call center, you’ll find no electronic boards ﬂashing hold times; agents’ compensation is tied to customer satisfaction, not call length. A large U.S. auto insurance company had a long-standing rule that when a customer called to cancel a policy, it would honor the request immediately in order to heighten efficiency. Recently, though, the company launched a pilot program to gather information from departing customers. Skillful, gentle questioning let the company not only identify the reasons for cancellation, which is very valuable marketing information, but also retain 17 % of those customers who had called to cancel. Of course, the average discussion time increased, but the agents generated a significant amount of additional revenue. The company has since abandoned its speed-at-any-cost policy. Find your future CEO in your call center. Call center agents gain a rich understanding of customers; you don’t want to isolate that knowledge from the rest of your company. At Pelephone, an Israeli cell-phone operator, the call center is the primary entry point for new hires. Only after employees understand the business through the eyes of the customers are they ready to tackle other assignments. Making a call center a training ground for new employees will, in time, fill a company with people who are focused on customers’ needs.

Don’t Take Calls, Make Contact

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