Call Centres

I have been away for a couple of weeks, so I thought I would return with a visit to an subject area that used to be close to my heart - the call centre.

We have had many interesting projects which involve call centres.? As is par for the course, we get called in long after the systems have been designed, implemented and hit the skids.? I am still staggered by how few lessons appear to have been learned when designing the technology, the layout and the jobs.? I have many favourite projects and I thought I would share a small sample of the joys of interacting with call centres here.

If any of you have to use call centres, remember the blob of protein at the end of the technology is not to blame.? They do not set staffing levels, nor do they write the appalling scripts, nor do they design the systems they are required to use.? I believe the fundamental insanity of call centre systems is continually reinforced by people who just don't care.?For example, I have just changed my Broadband supplier.? I hit a problem and followed all the diagnostics.? I realised that I needed to speak to someone, so I sent in a request via a form on the supplier’s website.? I was then notified that they would be unable to speak to me as they did not hold my email address.? The notification came via email.? To move on…

Dealing with customer queries

Most call handlers receive calls from customers who are rarely happy.? They are calling because they have problems and sometimes, the problems are quite scary (from the customer perspective).?

Here is ant example.? We were called in by a large energy supplier to look at issues of phone abuse and customer complaints.? We spent time with call handlers, interviewing them and observing them at work.? As with many environments, there were very visible signs of the number of calls handled, numbers waiting and number of customers who had hung up.? You will be familiar with calling such centres.? You are always told that there are exceptional call volumes, that you should use the internet to solve problems and that you can use chat bots to help you.?

Typically, the call handlers pick up calls based on some service level agreement that represents an acceptable wait time.? Unsurprisingly, the wait time that the company tolerates does not always equate with the wait time that the customer deems to be acceptable.? By the time the call is answered, the customer is not always completely happy.? These customers are rarely calling to congratulate the company on its cheapness, its kindness, and the pay packet of its senior leadership team.? In this case, the customers were mostly calling with bill queries.? The system designers had anticipated this, and the call handlers were logged into the bill query system.? Once the customer was speaking to the call handler, the first question was: “Do you have your account number?”? In many cases the answer was “No”.? So, the customer had to provide a name, address and details about their account.? Unfortunately, the script asked for the customer account number as the first question, before anything else was explored.? This script worked well if the customer was querying the bill.? If the enquiry was more complex, then the call handler had to log out of the bill system and into a different system.? The first question that the call handler was required to ask was “What is your customer account number?”? At this stage, an already irate customer was suddenly moving towards incandescent.? The call handlers, being very flexible and not wanting to be shouted at, adopted a number of strategies to deal with this problem. The most commonly adopted one was to write the customer account number down, then re-type it into the new system.? As the call handlers are all monitored on speed, they rarely checked the details with the caller, resulting in some very peculiar situations and sometimes causing random customers to receive startling emails.

Another feature of the same system, and linked to the speed issue, was the very, very, very irate customer.? This customer would call and be picked up by a call handler.? The customer had a hard problem, so the call handler would navigate from the bill payment system to the system dealing with more complex problems.? The more experienced call handlers would realise that the call was potentially going to take a very long time, and this would impact their call numbers, with potentially negative effects on their performance and even their pay.? The call handlers were able to utilise an unexpected feature of the system.? They could “relinquish” the call back to the system.? Their data would show that they had dealt with the call in super quick time and they could move on to an easier problem.? A second call handler would then pick up the call.? The customer would have been told by the first call handler that a colleague would be better able to deal with their query.? We believe that in some cases tricky customers would be bumped into the system on three and even four occasions before becoming a seething mass of anger and demanding to speak to a supervisor.

The organisation wondered why so many callers became angry, blamed the call handlers and took it out on these poor, understaffed and underpaid call handlers, poorly served by the technology and the job design.

A second project looked at a similar problem.? In this case it was attempting to understand why people called up the organisation to shout at their call handlers.? We discovered that the call handlers had been appointed in response to customers constantly being unable to get solutions to their problems.? Again, the callers were typically confused, upset or just plain angry about bills.? In this case, the call handlers simply required a name and an address.? Unfortunately, as the call handlers were an add-on, they were located next to some equipment which, when used, was a little noisy.? A typical conversation went something like this: “Can I have your name and address please” – “Jo Bloggs, 1 Acacia Avenue”, the burst of noise from the machine clattering in the background means the call handler cannot hear the caller properly and has to raise their voice to overcome the ambient noise: “Sorry, can you please repeat that”…the caller, now being shouted at down the phone, raises their voice – “Jo Bloggs, 1 Acacia Avenue” and a very shouty conversation begins which often escalated into hostility, aggression and all round unpleasantness.

It is almost as if the designers of jobs and software care about neither the people who work in the organisation nor their customers.? I console myself, that even with the rise of technology there may still be employment opportunities for people who understand how jobs should be designed and how people matter!

My plea to you all is to remember when you call someone, they are following a script, they are continually monitored, they work long hours for low pay for companies that would rather the call handlers didn't exist. So when these call handlers appear to be stupid or unhelpful or uncaring, remember it is the company that is stupid, unhelpful and doesn't care. Ask yourself how is it possible that every call you ever make it at a time of exceptionally high demand and why are you fobbed off with an answer that is not to the question you were asking but to a completely different one!

Occasionally we look at the jobs we are offered and have to ask very hard questions about our role and about whether we figure the clients to be “bad” clients. In my next article I will look at the challenges posed by bad clients, how to spot them and what to do about them.