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Government Call Centers Can Adopt Best Practices from the Private Sector
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Government Call Centers Can Adopt Best Practices from the Private Sector

October 15, 2013

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By Tracey E. Schelmetic,
TMCnet Contributor

We know – just from observing Congress this week – that when it comes to getting tasks done in a timely, efficient manner, there are few people who would nominate the federal government for a best-practices award. Aside from maybe NASA – which has its own stories of waste – most government agencies seem to operate on a steady diet of waste, redundant technologies, more capital sunk into outdated systems, fraud and misuse and a lack of interoperability and coordination that would cause the private sector to blush.


Call centers run by the federal government are no exception, according to a recent guest article in Forbes penned by Charles Brooks, Vice President and Client Executive for Xerox. (Xerox purchased call center outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services (News - Alert), or ACS, in February 2010 for $6 billion.)

“There’s money to be saved, and federal government agencies are taking a look at their customer contact centers,” writes Brooks. “There are too many of these centers, and they don’t always work together very well. That adds up to costs.”

Brooks notes that consolidation is a good place to start. Private industry has known this for years: the more call centers you operate in a siloed manner, the more errors you’re likely to make, and the more frustrated customers will become as they are bounced from location to location, expected to repeat their questions and their personal information many times over.

Under the mandate to reduce waste and save money, many federal agencies are increasingly looking to private industry best practices to save money and boost efficiency. Brooks notes that there are three “takeaways” for federal agencies to follow when it comes to emulating the private sector.

Scalability. “The way to doing more with less in an era of government belt-tightening is to adapt scalable service desk operations to meet the complexity and diversity in an agency’s core objectives,” writes Brooks. “Many federal agencies have dozens of help desks operating independently across various states.”

 By unifying these customer support centers, technologically if not geographically, they can operate as a single entity that will help save money (preventing redundant systems) and increase efficiency, since all players will be working from the same sources and on the same systems.

Automation. Brooks notes that technology today can allow many human-run government call center tasks be more automated, freeing up agents to answer more complex questions and boosting the consistency of service for citizens.

“Because of recent IT advances, (specifically with cloud alternatives) customer contact centers can now be automated and assimilated into enterprise service desk platforms that use multi-channel contact tools such as phone, email, text, Web, mobile devices, or through self-service tools and agent assisted responses,” he writes.

Performance management. As the private sector knows, disengaged employees are sub-par employees. Managers should encourage agents to strive to both improve their outcomes and their collaboration with other departments and individuals.

“Creating a culture of collaboration while hiring and training technically savvy customer service agents are paramount for success,” he notes. “Incentivizing the agents with performance rewards is also important, because a happy agent means a happy customer.”

While “happy customers” might not be a common outcome for government agencies, by restructuring to mimic the best practices of private contact centers, agencies can both save money and improve outcomes.




Edited by Blaise McNamee
Call Center On Demand Home Page





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