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On the surface, it can be easy to dismiss customer insight about a call center. These are not people “in the trenches,” after all, and everyone is wise following a disaster. Dismissing customer insight outright can be a dangerous thing, and so both call centers and call center customers should be paying attention to some key signs that the call center just doesn't much care about its customers, as detailed in a recent report from CustomerThink.

One sign is that there are a lot of repeat calls. Repeat calls are a big sign of problems, whether it's a lack of first-call resolution, technical issues, long hold times or other issues. While figuring out just what the problem is sometimes a call for closer inspection, just having a slate of repeat calls is a clear sign of a problem afoot.

Second, the services being offered aren't meeting customer needs. While some services are offered as a means to “keep up with the Joneses,” where here the Joneses are competing firms, not all service offerings are available to meet customer needs. A company that adds social media contact but doesn't see much traffic on its Facebook (News - Alert) page is a good example of this.

Third, poor decision making can be a problem. An overly long decision-making process, or a lot of changes in decisions, suggests that the will of the people isn't being sufficiently considered as the decisions made aren't solving the problem. This actually relates to the last two signs, as poor decision making can be gauged by a lack of clear improvement—the wrong decisions generally don't yield the right results—and by increasing expenses with no real results.

Generally, much of this can be avoided by finding out what the customer wants and then making every effort to actually do it. Some things the customer wants are impossible, like offering certain products or services that don't exist, or offering products for free. Some things are just difficult, and others much easier to do. From there, a company can adjust its response to customer desires and attempt to produce a whole that encompasses as much of that desire as possible. This connection to customers displays a call center that values customer insight, which is one more reason to come back: the business cares about its customers.

It takes a lot to go with a business that clearly cares less about its customers than others, so those who listen and follow up are more likely to preserve customer counts and even draw new business in. It's a great way to fend off competitors in price-sensitive fields, and it may be one of the simplest—if not always the easiest—ways to make a business thrive even in uncertain conditions.