Fulfilment Services - Are Call centres changing?
You may remember a few years back, financial companies, particularly American Express, changed the ethos of their call centres. They made major changes which seemed unheard of in call centres around the world, getting rid of scripted responses and turning the focus onto listening to consumers. It’s no coincidence that Amex stood out from the financial crowd which were notorious for bad customer services and response handling in 2012.
In the New Year, those who use fulfilment services such as call centres should re-evaluate their service offerings, increasing the time spent listening to customers on the phone. The focus should change to focussing on consumer needs. The efficiency and costs savings associated with call centres is rarely challenge, somewhat surprisingly as they are so often criticized, creating further problems.
Companies must be thinking about how to rectify this as customers are becoming more demanding going into 2013. The economic condition in the past 3-4 supports this claim as customers are far more conscious of where their money is going and how the banks are handling their finances. This curiosity will soon spread into other businesses and industries if the economic condition doesn’t improve meaning businesses need to review their attitude towards customer service which is so important to customer loyalty.
To summarise, call centres should focus on two things, gathering and listening to customer feedback and actively using this feedback to create a better service offering. Fulfilment companies should accommodate for more time spent on the phone and ditch the script, leading to better customer service and customer retention.