I'll bet that anyone who's ever been a customer has at least one nightmare of an experience when calling into a customer service call center. It's not only the customers of call centers that get frustrated; the people at the other end of the phone experience their own version of frustration. In fact, some have gone so far as to create blogs focused on the frustrations of being a call center employee.
So, we have an environment in which both the service provider and the service recipient are frustrated. Where did the problem begin? What's the root cause? If we want to fix this
The very term "Call Center" conjures images of a facility in which low-paid, disposable employees "process" calls. There's nothing customer-centric about that. As a result, the following occurs:
- The company considers the call-center a cost-center, and manages it based on reducing costs at all costs.
- The customers resent the contacting the call center, because of the low expectations they’ve been trained to have about call centers (resulting from item #1!)
- The employees in the call center don't like working in the call center, because, well, they feel unloved by their employer and their customers (resulting from #1 and #2).
So, if the concept is reframed from Call Center to Customer Experience Center, or Customer Engagement Center, if the company invests in building culture and commitment, we'd likely see better results.
After reading the book, "Delivering Happiness," I had a more clear understanding of how the call center (pardon the term !) can be transformed to contribute the brand and customer loyalty.
Here's the point:
If the customer support organization is seen and managed differently by the company, customers will like being a customer more, and employees will like being employees more. And I'm sure that management would have no problem with either of those dynamics.
Perception drives behavior, and behavior drives results.