Delivering Customer Service in a Time of Crisis

If a crisis struck today, it’s more than likely your IT organization is prepared. But, as the person responsible for customer service and support, are you?

Many IT departments have developed plans to respond to everything from natural disasters like hurricanes, to technological crises caused by hardware or software failures, viruses, hackers, or accidental employee error. As companies shift their thinking to business continuity planning, IT services represent only one of the essential components of continuous business operations. The evolution of e-commerce and the real-time enterprise are placing greater demands on support organizations because even the smallest interruptions in customer service can have serious business consequences. In addition to business continuity for corporate IT, companies can’t forget about taking care of one of their biggest assets - their customers.

As companies devise their crisis and disaster planning, recovery and contingency plans, they must consider customer service strategies to minimize business disruption and protect customer relationships. After all, in a time of crisis, customers may require or expect that your company will demonstrate leadership with excellent customer service that can respond with accurate, real-time answers to their questions.

Over the last 10 years, Knova Software’s customers have responded to crisis situations with the full power of their customer service organizations. From AmSouth’s incredible response to customers during Hurricane Katrina to McAfee’s proactive handling of virus epidemics, to Ford’s unwavering response to recalls, Knova has worked with its customers to prepare for and respond to crises in the most efficient and effective way possible.

While there are no hard and fast rules that will cover every possible crisis customer service scenario, below are six core recommendations based on our experience working with many of the world’s leading customer-centric organizations:

1) Planning is Required

Customer service operations, and call centers in particular, necessitate the development of crisis and disaster planning. These plans should be specific to the external and internal risks and vulnerabilities of your operations, your customers, your geographic region and your business in general. It is critical to categorize the different types of crises that your business might face and the impact on - and dependencies of - different aspects of your customer service operations. Only with this analysis are you then able to identify steps for risk mitigation, proactive service and disaster recovery.

2) Deliver Proactive and Personalized Customer Service

Each customer’s response to a crisis situation will be different, although most will not care about your company’s overall image and broad customer response. They will only care about how the crisis impacted them personally. Your ability to deliver proactive and personalized customer service will vary depending on your industry, the nature of the customer relationship, the types of customer information available, and the types of products and services you sell. There are a multitude of channels for proactive and personalized customer service to ensure effective customer communication before, during, and after a crisis situation. During these phases of a crisis, proactive communication and service delivery is critical across all channels, including email, automated phone banks, public service announcements, proactive self-service and flexible IVR systems. In addition, make sure that your call center agents are armed with all the latest information by integrating your knowledge assets with your business processes. Since customers will also hold you accountable for your post crisis response, never forget to follow up with them after the crisis to find out how you can improve your response next time. Remember, customers primarily care about how you served them and only them.

3) Crises Demand Real-Time Answers

Fast, accurate problem resolution for people in need is critical. Companies mustensure that customers and call center representatives have immediate, current, and relevant information to preserve normal business operations during a crisis. Loss of effective customer service in a time of crisis could run into the millions of dollars, not to mention the cost of losing customer loyalty if your competition is better prepared. From crisis-related policies and procedures to breaking news on how people are affected to product fixes and resolutions, critical information at the fingertips of call center agents makes them infinitely more effective at handling customer inquiries. Making real-time information available to agents means having a flexible, knowledge backbone that can incorporate new information constantly. Whatever knowledge management solution a company has, it should be able to integrate information regardless of format, and most importantly, it should provide agents with a guided workflow that steps them through the process of resolving customer issues.

4) Self-Service is the First Line of Defense

With contact centers overloaded – or perhaps even taken offline – during a crisis, self-service may be the best way for customers who can get online to get the help they need. Although less personal than a human voice on the other end of a phone, self-service can frequently be easier, less expensive and resolve customer problems faster than calling a contact center. Routing customers to the information they need from the home page of your site, providing real-time updates of new services and information available, and orchestrating outbound customer service alerts are just a few of the things to consider when optimizing self-service in a crisis. In addition, if the call center is up and running, IVR systems today are flexible enough to be quickly modified with proactive messages and even with more interactive resolution capabilities.

5) Maximize All Available Resources

When call volume spikes and more resources are needed, or when some contact centers shut down, knowledge management is critical to making novice agents - or temporary replacement agents - highly capable with minimum training. Guided resolution workflows and scripts are essential in this respect. They enable novice agents to contribute real value immediately to customers in desperate situations, while following company policies and protocol. Be prepared to shift call routing as well. Sharing space in other call centers or with other businesses in addition to telecommuting may be effective options to keep customer service on track.

6) Adjust in Real-Time

Crises can be unpredictable with frequently changing circumstances. Analytic reports can help business managers evaluate the issues coming into the call center and determine how they’re being resolved (or not being resolved) so that customer service can adapt as needed. When the problems customers face are changing hour by hour, analytics can play a critical role in helping companies prioritize what issues to solve first and what channels can be best leveraged to get customers the answers and information they need.

Effective crisis planning, management and recovery are no longer limited to basic IT considerations. Customer service and call center operations are not only mission-critical assets but also serve mission-critical assets – your customers. With customer service increasingly a differentiator and driver of customer loyalty and value, the handling of these critical situations is critical to your business and success.