Farewell to customer service "The automated self-service center"
by Niels Kjellerup, Publisher and editor. 18.12.2008.
How we lost the customer in the service equation -
In 1980 when the first Answer Centers was setup in the US,
large corporations realised based on the TARP research that customers demanded
accountability and access to the suppliers of the product and service they
purchased. The Japanese superior service culture had made a big dent in the US
automotive Industry. AT&T was being dismantled and needed new revenue fast and
saw the Answer centre as a key to selling 1-800 numbers.
In 1980 there were only 3-4 vendors producing ACD’s and
today only the Rockwell Galaxy and Aspect remains in different ownership.
From 1985 until 1995 both AT&T and Nortel developed ACD’s
and we saw the birth of the Call Centre, a more automated Answer Center. The
biggest vendor group back then were the producers of predictive/power diallers.
Today few are left, but those who made the transition to call centre automation
have been very successful- Genesys most of all.
When the internet arrived vendors quickly embraced the idea
of the contact centre, no more restrained to just taking calls, and from 1995 –
to 2005 the integration of digital dialog with the customer has been all the
rage. Rapid consolidation amongst the vendors has taken place to meet this new
challenge. My guess-stimate is that by 2010 the last transition from Contact
Centre to the automated self-service center will be completed.
What is driving this transformation is the cost of
delivering 'indifferent or bad' service. Rarely if ever have I seen a
vendor ROI based on anything other than more cost savings and unsaid,
deterioration of customer service.
The vendors successfully built the MYTH, that customer
service was a cost needing to be contained by more automation.
When we ask the customer (We know exactly what the
customers want from their service experience): “Easy, timely access to someone,
who can understand my situation and who is willing to engage and has authority
to resolve that situation in a polite and effective manner”, in fact research
shows that 69% of customers leaving do so because of lack of engagement & care.
When we ask Senior Management what ROI is expected
from Customer Service delivery the answer is equally clear: “Happy customers who
buy more, more often at a lower cost than alternative distribution channels”.
Finally we ask Service representatives: “To be
allowed to engage the customer and resolve issues to the customer’s
satisfaction”.
So why are call- & contact centres obsessed with
call-production? Because they have adopted the vendors ‘productivity’ measures
as the final valuable product of customer service delivery. An entire generation
of Call Centre managers have embraced the limitation of the vendor’s software
and hardware and accepted that since traffic measures is all we can measure,
than that is the primary product produced by Customer Service. The mathematics
of Agner Erlang’s 1917 distribution tables are the algorithms behind the
workforce management software, intended to really ensure service reps are ‘being
productive’.
The only way to increase these soviet style ‘productive’
measures further is to get rid of the service rep and send the customer to the
automated self-service center.
Serving the customer needs is the ‘reason d’etre’ of
most organisations.
But in this transformation process we first lost the
customer, then the service rep and finally the support of senior management.
The automated Self-service center will not be a substitute
for the customer service required by customers; the customer-walk out syndrome
will very rapidly impact on the business model in terms of soft revenue growth
and less profit.
Like a Phoenix the REAL customer service centres will rise
from the ashes of the automated service center and meet the customers DEMAND for
engagement and care.
The new kid on the block is called Net-Promoter® Score.
NPS is the single most reliable indicator of a company's potential to grow and
explains why large corporations are adopting this KVI to measure customer
satisfaction. Worthwhile studying and introducing in your Customer Service
Centre, not worth it if you’re still running a call-production facility.
Customer Service will become an integral part of the
selling processes. The current vendors will most likely disappear and the new
vendors will deliver web-based software tracking systems, which documents the
real value of customer service to the business model. A Customer Service
renaissance can be expected by 2012.
If you doubt my word – just ask Michael Dell, who built
Dell Computer based on delivering ‘service beyond the customers wildest dreams’
and nearly lost the company, when cost cutters moved service delivery to India,
because no one could remember that it was ‘superior service’ which built Dell
Computers originally.
And so we have come full circle in the customer service
industry.
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