The year 2013 closed off rather poorly for retail giant Target (News - Alert). The company experienced a fairly large, fairly dangerous data breach, which only hit the public news outlets weeks after it had actually happened.
Of course, for Target this meant a customer service nightmare. Angry, panicked customers flocked to the phones to reach out to the retailer’s contact center for answers. Given the amount of customers affected, which totals some 40 million, this meant clogged phone queues with ridiculous wait times, busy signals, dropped calls, or no response at all. For its website, bandwidth was compromised as customers tried a different channel for information.
Essentially, Target was ill-prepared to deal with the cleanup of this terrible ordeal, and the customers were the unfortunate ones to pay for it. Not to mention that this happened smack dab in the middle of the busiest shopping season of the year, and there was simply not enough staff to handle the many fires that needed extinguishing.
Consumers' perception of Target dropped to the lowest point — a minus 19 — since at least June 2007, according to a recent survey by sentiment tracking service YouGov BrandIndex. For the first time in more than six years, that negative perception of Target has outweighed positive feelings for the brand.
For a big retailer, this is very bad news, and it will require a lot of time, a lot of patience and a lot of waiting before customers’ faith can be restored.
The company is still experiencing high volume calls in its contact center, and the ill-feelings towards the retailer can tell those of us in the CRM space how and when things can and will go wrong and what to do about it.
The old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” couldn’t be truer when it comes to the contact center, but in this case, prevention went out the window when Target failed to notify the public about the data breach as it happened.
While it doesn’t mean much to the customer who is fuming at the other end of the phone call, for the contact center, VoIP call recording can play an important part in getting Target’s customer service on the straight and narrow and, hopefully, take care of the customer service debacle that is still going on.
VoIP call recording can help Target contact center managers to stay up to speed on agent performance; how calls are being handled, whether they’re being accurately routed, and helping customers with the necessary information they need to safeguard against any malicious attacks that could arise because of the data breach.
Managers can review calls as they are recorded and take a few moments to talk to the staff, to ask questions and see where it all went right or wrong and use that as a launching pad for improvement. Whether it’s discussing scripted or off-the-script calls, managers and reps can use this information to improve future calls related to Target’s data breach.
With the knowledge gained from VoIP call recording, Target can take its missteps and use it to evolve and offer better customer care. While it won’t fix the damage done, it can provide a way to help gain back the trust and confidence from its large customer base.
Edited by Alisen Downey