Call Center Management Featured Article
How Call Center Management Can Drive Effective Change Across the Organization
When you look around the businesses you frequent the most, do you notice there seems to be a heavier focus on improving the customer service experience? Whether the checkout lines have changed or the signage is designed to promote the value experience, companies seem to be stepping up to the plate to improve quality customer care. For call center management, such initiatives are nothing new.
What could be considered new in the call center space, however, is the focus on how quality customer care really can impact operations throughout the organization. Traditionally speaking, the call center was often viewed as nothing more than a cost channel instead of an opportunity to stand out from the competition. When customer service is improved across the brand experience, it can improve everything from the bottom up within the company.
The thought process is not necessarily innovative as companies have long approached a continuous improvement strategy as a key element of their success. When this focus is embraced throughout multiple departments, that’s when game changing actually takes place. How many times have members of your call center management team implemented strategies for better customer service, only to have these initiatives deliver little value when another company division falls short?
A recent Forrester (News - Alert) white paper explores just how call center management can make a difference throughout the organization when management overall accepts this concept. The key is to understand customer communication channel preferences and respond accordingly. Voice is still a strong channel, among a certain demographic. If your company is targeting millennials exclusively, what they desire in outcomes is very different than that of older generations. As preferences change among the customer base, you have to be ready to respond.
To implement such a plan effectively, you have to listen to the voice of the customer and take their feedback as something valuable that can help your operations overall. It enables you to understand the journey your customers take with your brand and make changes along that journey as necessary to match with their desires. In doing so, you equip other departments to better meet the needs of the customer the first time around and improve overall processes.
To fully capture the voice of the customer, be sure to collect both structured and unstructured feedback. Also put a strategy in place that allows you to survey your customers on the effectiveness of the service delivered at every interaction, regardless of the channel. This not only allows for improvements across those channels, but you can also better personalize the experience for that customer if you associate the feedback with their experience.
Such strategies reinforce that quality customer care is not the sole responsibility of the call center, but an organizational focus. When you incorporate the feedback, you’re more likely to drive effective change and improvement across the entire organization.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi