Lose Complexity, not Customers

A couple of interesting recent pieces of research have explored some of the possible reasons for sub-standard customer service in call centres and concluded that the problem is rooted in the tools the agents are given to do their jobs, rather than the agents themselves. In particular, they found agents often struggle to use the vast number of different IT systems they typically access to answer customer queries.

Research house Dynamic Markets, for example, found that 66% of call centre agents have to use three IT applications on a typical call, 27% use five or more. The researchers asked the agents what impact this had: 71% said that time is wasted on or after calls because of switching between different applications; more than half admitted that errors crept in to their work; and 53% said customers react very badly.

A separate survey, conducted earlier this year by pollsters YouGov, showed the danger of ignoring these symptoms. They looked specifically at call centre service in the broadband sector and found that this kind of frustration leads directly to customer defection. More than one in five UK consumers admitted dumping their existing broadband provider after experiencing poor call centre service.

This suggests that call centre managers and their IT people should pay more attention to what’s going on at the desktop. Even the most charming agent will struggle to remain calm, polite and efficient if they are faced with the equivalent of an IT jungle every time they deal with a customer. So what is the solution? Interestingly, when Dynamic Markets asked agents themselves what they would do to improve service, top of the list was having just one IT application to use when serving customers.

Is this just a pipedream? Not for companies like BT and Telewest that are already doing just this. They have decided to take an agent-centric view of their call centre IT systems and have developed simplified user interfaces that deliver all the applications agents need to use on a single desktop screen. Now call centre agents can sign-on once and use what appears to be just one tailored application, whilst technology from UK software company Corizon is actually interacting with all the individual applications behind the scenes. They have not had to ditch existing investments they’ve made in their IT systems, because the Corizon software is re-using what is there already, but presenting it in a way that better suits their business goals and agent needs.

This makes the agents more productive, cuts user errors (by eliminating the need to re-key information) and reduces staff training needs. BT recently estimated that they have cut the time agents spend interacting with applications by up to 90% in some key scenarios. More importantly, it is ensuring that their customers get the fastest and best service possible. Such an approach, in effect, means losing IT complexity rather than customers.