Customers help themselves to customer care
It appears that only half of all call centre transactions are now handled by people. This is because the use of automated self-service tools in call centres has surged over the past decade, to the point that only 50 per cent of callers actually talk to real people.
In 1997, 90 per cent of contact centre calls were handled by an operator but today that figure has fallen by almost half. Interactive Voice Response and web-based systems now respectively account for 15.5 per cent and 13.7 per cent of all transactions. Other transactions use part computer / part person systems such as the VCII offered by Voice Connect www.voiceconnect.co.uk installed at the Houses of Parliament for example.
Derrick Cameron from IT firm Eximium comments “Whilst it can be very temping to save money through automation, it is important to recognize that the cost of a lost customer can be very high to your business when things go wrong. Certain processes can be simplified and even improved through automation, but it’s important to keep the human element in the equation when things don’t work out. Where automated processes are introduced, it is important to carefully think through just what is going on in the mind of the customer to ensure that a proper service is being provided – and not just the inability to complain due to lack of opportunity.”
It now takes and average 39 seconds for centres to respond to a call, compared with 23 second in 1997. And the time taken to respond to messages left by customers has almost doubled from 11 to 20 hours.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Business Advice, Business Solutions, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Thank you for your comment. We look forward to more from you.