Dumb Metrics in Customer Service
The damage caused by dumb metrics is immense in the construct of the customer service call centers. Metrics are surely useful to measure the performance of a customer service call center but if you are not right about having the right metrics, the whole process can go for a toss. It's true that the metrics required for your project will be different from any other that you have worked on. Every single customer service outsourcing project has its own requirements. However, the basics remain the same. If you try to tailor-fit a metric on your project because your rival brand is doing so, it may backfire. It's wise if the customer service planners chalk out the metrics that are essential for the project.
Most customer service call centers like to measure performance of the agents through call lengths. The general idea is that the more calls covered at the customer service call center, the better it is. That may be true to a certain extent. Calls at the outsourcing customer service desk need to be answered immediately. If the calls go into waiting mode or there is a backlog, it reflects poorly on the customer service outsourcing unit. Clients don't like it either when their customers are calling the desk only to find the line busy. That is why the agents have to dispense off their calls promptly and move to the next one. But in this process, the customers who are on the phone feel rushed. In an effort to welcome the next caller, you are pushing through the present one! That is not a desirable situation at all. The customer service call centers have to be very careful about such lapses in choosing the right metrics.
The same logic applies to the hold time metric of customer service call centers. Every customer service call center has a designated threshold time for a caller to be put on hold. Beyond that, the patience of the caller snaps and the call is disconnected. Such dissatisfied potential customers generally don't call back. It is imperative that the customer service outsourcing unit reduce the hold time and process the caller's request immediately. This is a justified metric for performance measurement. But what can you say about the outsourcing customer service unit that does not provide ample training to the agents so that they may answer questions promptly? Some of these units don't provide the required authority to the agents to resolve issues. In such cases, you cannot question the ability of the agent to reduce the hold time.
In other words, the responsibility of fine-tuning the call center customer service department doesn't just lie with the agents. The management has equal stakes to hold in that. You will be surprised to note how a customer service call center can improve from a weak unit to a force to reckon with, just by tweaking the metrics. Metrics are measuring sticks that have little value unless you know how to use them effectively. Study the requirements of the project before you decide on them.
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