Eaglezview

Consider this scenario – One afternoon, following an hour of tireless attempts, I finally get through the IVRS of my service provider. What service? Well, it doesn’t matter. The following is the typical conversation that ensues.

Call center executive:

“Good afternoon sir, I am ‘Kala’, may I confirm that you are calling from number alphabetazetagamaomoega?”

“May I confirm that your date of birth isn’t today/in the future?”

“May I confirm that your mother’s maiden name isn’t Sanjay?”

“May I confirm that your billing address isn’t somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy?”

“Alright sir, now, how can I help you?”

I:

“Could you provide me the phone number I need to dial into in order to connect to the internet via the phone, in dial up mode?”

Call center executive:

“Can I put you on hold till I fetch this information for you?”

I:

“Sure”

Call center executive (after another 20mins):

“Sorry sir, you have connected to the wrong department. I will give you the number you need to call to get your query resolved. Please call *xyz,*abc”

I:

“Well, you could have told me this right at the start!”

I fail to understand why someone needs 20 minutes to finally direct you to someone else. I patiently try again, the eternal optimist that I am or is that my way of saying that I am really helpless anyways! May be the latter is the truth! Well, anyways, what happens is that in spite of the continuous waste of time, money and energy all that I have achieved is to get a bunch of numbers to which I can keep calling for days and it wouldn’t help resolve my problem.

I am sure all of us have been through this. Given this experience time after time, with service provider after service provider, be it banks, telecom companies, ISPs – I really wonder as to what percentage of calls actually help resolve customer issues? I don’t have the data, but, my perception and personal experience makes me put that figure at about 5-10%; which may be completely wrong, but definitely that doesn’t weaken my argument in any sense. I am very certain that 90% of the calls do not help resolve customer issues. What are the consequences of this? It is right there for everyone to see – customer disconnect and frustration, brand value erosion and bad publicity. We all know a happy customer may talk about good service to one or two people; an irate customer will talk to a far greater number of people about your bad service. Aren’t call centers of private corporations analogous to the committees and commissions set up by governments to delay things? A call center, as I see it in its current form, is primarily a first line of defense of any corporation and is NOT meant to resolve issues of the customer. They are meant to keep irate customers at bay! If we look cursorily as to why this happens – the answer is pretty much clear. The people at the other end, the ones dealing with these customers are either incompetent or uninformed or unauthorized to act or all of them. Now the simple question is – if you go to a bank for a query and you find that a certain clerk ‘A’ is not competent, delays things, is not informed about the procedures and is not authorized to take a call on your case – would you go to that clerk or would you go to another official who is competent, well informed and empowered to take a decision on your case? The answer is obvious. But, if it so obvious, why don’t call centers embrace these fundamental truths?

The only advantage I see to a corporation in employing the services of a call center in handling customer issues is reduction in costs. It has nothing to do with customer satisfaction or care in an after sale scenario. Is this a good long term strategy? Certainly not.

Let’s get back to the original question, “Do call centers enhance or devalue customer trust & brand image?” I think they erode more value than they create. At least in the current avatar that’s what they seem to do.

(c) Suresh Damodaran,2007