Call Center Performance Key to Keeping Customers Happy

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

How important is overall call center performance? If you care about keeping customers happy and making sure they don’t take their business elsewhere, it should be at the top of your priority list. This recent 1to1 Media post explored how Assurant investigated its own call center performance to try and reverse a dangerous trend that had emerged: customer attrition.

In its investigations, Assurant determined that its call center operations were actually finely tuned. The problem in call center performance was found when Assurant, a specialty insurance company, deeply analyzed customer data and discovered missed opportunities to establish more personalized relationships between customers and agents. Cameron Hurst, vice president of targeted solutions at Assurant, noted that while the call center was well managed, well run and had a seasoned staff, overall call center performance was struggling as a result of turnover issues. 

The analysis determined that there were attributes in place that would enable the center to connect a customer to specific customer service representatives when they called in.With these findings in hand, Assurant was able to develop a home-grown agent call-matching technology known as Real-Time Analytics Matching Platform (RAMP). The solution was customized to analyze a combination of key attributes such as customers’ persistency, the CSRs’ tenure and ability to save a customer, and the financial metrics around a customer, such as future economic value, potential revenue, etc.

 The platform could then match CSRs with customers based on these algorithms.With this new call center performance practice in place, Assurant was able to elevate its customer save rate from 15.5 to 23.5 percent in the first year after the solution was deployed. This also helped to generate an increase in the save fee rate (the CSR’s (News - Alert) ability to save customers’ eligible fees) from 16.5 percent to 36 percent in the first year. By 2010, the save fee rate was 47 percent.

Agent attrition also dropped for Assurant by 25 percent in the first year after the solution was deployed. Hurst believes that placing CSRs in interactions that would make them successful and ultimately earn them more money was key to this improvement in the call center performance. And, while the solution is still in its infancy, the ability to match a customer with an agent better equipped to build a rapport with that customer helps to drive the ultimate in call center performance so that the customer stays happy and the company can turn a profit.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny

(source: http://call-center-performance.tmcnet.com/topics/call-center-performance/articles/136918-call-center-performance-key-keeping-customers-happy.htm)

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