One of the continuing efforsts of singaporean call centers is to focus efforts on finding new avenues of measuring performance and improving coaching for their contact center staff. While solutions have been around for some time now, the recent enhancements are compelling.

Recent enhancements include multi channel recording (not only voice, but also desktop screens for IM and chat supports). Sentiment analyis and better User Interface for QA staff to drill down and pick out the more interesting recordings.

Sentiment analysis allows the software to flag conversations where a noticeable rise in tone and pitch is detected. These usually mark the start of an irate call. Last week, I had the opportunity to be introduced to NICE perform, next week, where such abilities were showcased in Insights 2008.

I have an opportunity to try out a competing product from autonomy called e-talk. The information for etalk on their website states:

Autonomy etalk offers call recording, analysis, and performance improvement solutions that support superior service and enable customer intelligence for call centres. The recently released Intelligent Contact Centre solutions include advanced intelligence-based functions such as Multi-channel Interaction Analysis, Real-time Agent Support and Contact Centre performance.

Singaporean call centers providing customer care or customer support services are often treated as cost centers. It is simply treated as an expense tied to marketing a product or service. 

However, due to resource pressures and for the sake of “efficiency” these are typically understaffed. This creates the long queue and waiting times that one gets when you try to call them. If your customers are waiting in a queue, queues can be a detriment to any form of selling.  In addition, this spoils the client’s experience and casts a shadow over the company. It is sad. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

IDEA: Treat your customer contact center as a REVENUE center!

Work with your marketing department and you will discover that they have challenges as well. They are often asked to develop new markets, new clients, find new insights by soliciting feedbacks from their clients. Isn’t this happening right now with your customer support center?

We have been in projects where call centers are paid to do outbound telemarketing. The way it works is for us to design effective call scripts and have them delivered by the most experienced (read:battle scarred, battle hardened) agents. We load a bunch of leads into our predictive dialer and let the campaign ‘rip”. These cold calls are to people that typically :

1. Do not know the company. (Not yet anyway)
2. Have no wish to buy anything from the company.
3. Annoyed at being disturbed. We do not have their permission to engage them in a conversation.

Is it any wonder then, that even the best telemarketing campaigns have a success rate of less than 5% of all the numbers called? However, consider the calls that you are now receiving in your customer contact center. These callers typically :

1. Already know about your company and your products and services.
2. Already bought one or more of your products or services
3. Have given you the permission to engage them in a conversation.

All that is needed here is a consistent program that helps your agents to REALLY help your clients. Put more resources to it. Reduce your queue. And once the client’s issue is resolved, they are typically more receptive to offers that will further improve their customer experience.

It is really about TIMING. Giving the up sell, revenue generating ’suggestion’ to the client at the right time, along with a smile and a geniune concern, this little persuasion is very effective!

A case in point is the technical support section that gets clients whose laptops have been infected.

The upsell here maybe to offer an anti-virus solution to them AFTER the technical support team have shown them how to detect and remove virii from their laptop. This technical center sold more anti-virus programs than their marketing department did.

Steve Coscia, best selling author of two best selling call center books, TELE-Stress and Customer service Over the Phone has this to say:

“Your phone systems also represents your company’s culture. And what customers are experiencing when they’re going to your phone system, affects their perception of your organization.”

Think about it. I’d like to hear about how this article has helped you. Leave a comment okay?
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Singapore’s TODAY newspaper dated Nov 15, 2007 had an article written by Liang Dingzi that highlighted the fact that many singaporean companies’ call centers are not equipped to handle surges in traffic. A lot of callers are kept on hold, or wait a typically long period of from 10 to 15 minutes before an operator can attend to them.

Most callers would simply end up hanging the phone after waiting for a long time. In Liang Dingzi’s words “Think of it like a retail store, where customers wait in line to be served. If someone wa1ks away because he has waited too long, you ‘have lost the customer, perhaps for good.Unfortunately, this cost does not show up in the books”

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