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Cold call center, dehumanized robots or smiling human beings?

Telephone support ineffectiveness can hurt a business badly. We all suffer from the not always well-programmed robots guiding us through a nightmare of questions and answers, only to ultimately let us down. We all suffer from externalized/delocalized call centers where people do not always let their skills shine through. We all suffer from support people who are supposed to provide us with solutions but who are not always able to go beyond their written script or helpdesk software.

I happened to spend some time in France, and I was in touch with Orange, where I was asked questions that the telephone robot didn’t always understand, was then put on hold for 10 minutes, where I had to listen to a primitive electronic music loop sample, and was then hung up on by their system.

Last week I was speaking to Atlas Blue, a Moroccan airline company and had to spend a quarter of an hour on the phone to get my booking finally changed. But I had to call back twice to finally receive the email confirmation… a week later.

Yesterday I was on the phone with Amazon. They have an automated call back service, to be activated from their web page. You type your phone number and ask them to call you back on the spot, which doesn’t cost a penny. They did call me on the spot. I had a support person on the phone who was patient, kind, totally relaxed, competent and smiling. She solved my problem without hassle and provided an accurate email confirmation two minutes later.

In customer satisfaction surveys, a specific area of interest, there are many tools available. Here are two different examples. The first one is from Apple (AppleCare service), issued from an email link, the other one is an automated tool from Voicent Communications, specializing in low-cost IVR –Interactive Voice Response (BroadcastByPhone). Have a look at both now, as Apple’s one might be closed shortly.

→ Rate here your company telephone support:

(1 is terrible 10 is superb)

Rate your automated customer support system:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Rate your call center here:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Rate your online support service:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Rate… yourself:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Of course, this evaluation is superficial, as I’m blogging here. But if you’d like me to go further together with you, email me.

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Next article on COMMUNICATION coming soon
 

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