This time of year is always exciting for me. December gives us a chance to reflect on the last 11 months and take a critical look at what went right, what went wrong, and what we should work on changing for 2008.
 
Many of us may be uncomfortable with stepping back and taking this kind of annual audit. It’s not easy looking at your business and admitting that not everything went as smoothly as planned. Perhaps your customer satisfaction scores were not as high as you wanted. Maybe employee turnover was higher than expected. Or possibly the company’s end of year numbers didn’t make your board members “merry and bright.” Whatever the reason, I thought I’d provide a little kick start to get you thinking about making some changes next year.

 
Below are my suggestions for the “Top Five New Year’s Resolutions to Improve Customer Service.”
 
5. Call center agents will be trained on new products before the phone rings.
 
“On the job training” takes on a whole new meaning when customers ask for information on products or services that agents have never heard of before. Usually the result of a communication breakdown, this situation frustrates agents and leaves an unfavorable impression of the company. Next year, make sure all your agents are properly trained and then use new communication techniques to arm them with the latest information. This could mean deploying instant messaging on all agent workstations or expanding your company Intranet to include a “Recent Updates” section. Carefully planned e-mail blasts are effective as well.
 
4. On-hold customers won’t fall asleep while waiting to be served.
 
Did you know the number one reason customers have to wait on hold is due to improper agent scheduling? Too many companies set schedules based on forecasts without the ability to adjust staffing levels if needed. This inflexibility frequently leads to extended customer wait times, rushed service and transactional mistakes. Whether you outsource your customer service activities or handle it in-house, the ability to instantly increase or decrease the number of available agents according to actual call volume is essential. With thousands of available agents and electronic scheduling systems, home-based agent call centers can show you how this can be done to increase revenue and avoid costly overages.
 
3. Extreme weather will not prevent us from helping customers.
 
As the winter season approaches, there’s no time like the present to develop a rock-solid contingency plan to prevent natural disasters, power outages or technical glitches from disrupting your customer service. Whether your operations are located in a wintery wonderland or a tropical paradise, unforeseen events can prevent agents from getting to work or can keep customer calls from getting to them. Start the New Year prepared with a back-up plan that includes redundant network operation centers, a dispersed agent workforce and multiple telephony and data carriers. This way, if Santa’s sleigh accidentally takes down a power grid, your calls can be instantly routed to agents in another area without inconveniencing your customers.
 
2. Agents will be hired based on more that just “who showed up.”
 
I’m not saying that follow-through isn’t an important characteristic, but providing standard-setting, awe-inspiring service requires agents with a wide range of skills. I’m sure your human resource department carefully hires the best agents from the applications they receive. The problem is that the number of applications is limited to people living within driving distance to your location. Hiring from this talent pool once may be fine, but tapping into the same group again and again can seriously deplete the amount of quality candidates. Virtual call centers can hire anyone from anywhere, creating the largest talent pool in North America. This unique access to agents allows companies to carefully pick customer service representatives with the right combination of experience, industry knowledge and customer service skills.
 
And the number one New Year’s Resolution for Improving Customer Satisfaction...
 
1. We will stop conducting business as usual and expect different results.
 
A long time ago, a wise mentor explained to me the definition of “business insanity.” He explained that those who kept doing exactly the same thing year in and year out, but kept expecting completely different results fall into the definition of “business insanity.”
 
Change is hard, especially when it requires a coordinated effort from your entire organization. If you are satisfied with the status quo and your customers are happy, by all means, keep doing what you are doing. If, on the other hand, you see room for improvement, if you want to generate different results next year, then you must do things differently. So, whether it’s using the home-based agent model, considering outsourcing for the first time, or maybe making some internal changes, I urge you to make a plan now.
 
Have a great 2008!
 
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Christopher M. Carrington is President and CEO of Alpine Access, Inc. a Denver, Colorado-based provider of call center services using home-based customer service and sales employees. Carrington has more than 25 years of business service experience. Alpine Access clients include J. Crew, Office Depot, ExpressJet and the IRS.
 


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