Off Center
 
As Lindsay Lohan will attest, sometimes it’s simply more profitable to be bad. Such is the case with customer service – if you know how to be bad correctly.

Many of you have probably heard of a little something called “The Service Recovery Paradox.” (And not just because I’ve alluded to it in previous posts – that would assume you’ve read me before and still returned.) The Service Recovery Paradox basically states that an effective recovery process following a bad customer service experience often results in higher customer satisfaction ratings than if the bad experience had never occurred in the first place.

While many of you are familiar with this paradox, most of you aren’t taking full advantage of it. Your service is simply too solid and consistent to ever shake things up, to ever wake customers out of their comfortable service coma and take notice of your company. Sure, your agents occasionally mess up on a call and give your company the opportunity to put the powerful paradox into action; however, you have too many quality initiatives and incentives in place that keep agents from screwing up big enough to have any real and lasting impact on customer sentiment.

If you truly want to win customers over, you have to dare to almost lose them first. I’m not suggesting that you encourage agents to sabotage every customer call, email and chat they handle – just one out of every five.

Below are some tips on how to help your call center suck just enough to dazzle customers:  


Utilize screen pops featuring impolite phrases and insults. Most of your agents don’t care very much about their job and thus shouldn’t have trouble finding ways to alienate and offend customers on their own. Some of your better agents, however, may struggle with intentionally botching service. A great way to overcome their struggles is to send them screen pops featuring cold, non-empathetic phrases and insults that will help them push customers to the brink of defection.

The key is to use screen pops containing language that is just offensive enough to make the customer emotional but not so over-the-top that the customer orders a hit on your agent or, worse, refuses to ever again do business with your company even after the recovery team swoops in to bring delight.


Fail to keep promises made during calls. Insulting customers isn’t the only way to win their lasting loyalty. It’s important to also make sure that their needs aren’t met 100% of the time.

However, don’t merely have agents tell customers that their issue can’t be resolved during the call, as such a feeble attempt on the part of the agent is likely to result in an angry caller explosion from which your company cannot recover. To best set customers up for the type of powerful service recovery that will ensure lifetime loyalty, you need to make customers think that their issue has been resolved upon ending the call with the agent, and then wait for them to realize that it hasn't been.

For example, agents should promise to process every order and issue all appropriate credits, but then occasionally not follow through on such actions. This will invariably result in angry callbacks from customers that escalate to the Recovery Team, who can then apologize profusely, fix the problem immediately, and tell the customer that the company will love them till the end of time. It’s also a good idea to (falsely) promise the customer that the agent in question will be fired, beaten or, worse, demoted to outbound telemarketing.             


Fire any agent who doesn’t receive at least two or three serious customer complaints each month. Make “Serious Customer Complaints” a formal metric for which all your agents are fully accountable. If it doesn’t fit on your agent performance scorecard, abbreviate it as “SCC” and/or get rid of First-Call Resolution, which is impossible to measure anyway.

Provide rewards and recognition to agents who consistently maintain the center’s desired monthly SCC average. For agents who fall short, provide coaching to help them become a little ruder and more incompetent, or just take away their medication. If you have any agents who far exceed the average SCC rate, move them into the Billing department.


ATTENTION: This is a satire. This is only a satire. Had this been an actual insightful blog post, it would not have been written by Greg. Any positive result that comes from taking Greg’s advice is strictly coincidental.

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Most organizations strive to implement viable web self-service applications so that only customers with highly complex issues or who are extremely lonely require live agent assistance. Unfortunately, many companies get so excited about the potential cost savings offered by self-service that they forget about a very critical factor: the customer experience. In these companies, economics alone drive the self-service strategy and, consequently, the self-service strategy drives customers to more expensive channels – or into the arms of the competition.

The terms “customer-centric” and “automation” are not mutually exclusive – you can have one with the other. In fact, to succeed in today’s competitive customer care environment, you must. Many customers – particularly those who suffer panic attacks when interacting with people, or who simply despise humanity, or who are electrical engineers – actually prefer to self-serve rather than wait in a queue for a live person to help them.

To ensure that their call center is as cost-effective AND as customer-centric as possible, leading organizations fully embrace – or at least hold hands with – the following web self-service practices:


Keep FAQs fresh and diverse – and actively promote them. You should never hear your agents mutter, “If I had a dime for every time a caller asked me [fill in monotonous, routine question here].” If you do, it means that the FAQ section of your web site either blows, is non-existent, or is under-promoted.

Top call centers invest in dynamic applications that continuously scan the vast universe of customer contacts – previous calls, email/chat transactions, knowledgebase searches – and track common customer inquiries and issues. This invaluable data is then used to develop rich and relevant FAQs (and responses) that can be posted on the web site, thus saving the center thousands of live customer contacts… and agents millions of live brain cells.

To optimize use of their online FAQ feature, smart call centers go out of their way to promote its existence and strongly encourage customers to take advantage of this valuable resource. Such promotion is typically done via automated messages in the center’s IVR system while callers are in queue (e.g., “You can find answers to a wide variety of questions on our website at www.wewouldrathernottalktoyou.com), or by having agents provide links to the FAQ portal during email and chat interactions with customers. On calls, agents can simply remind customers about the FAQ feature and, to truly inspire action, tell the caller that every time they access the FAQs, an angel gets its wings.    


Implement powerful search tools featuring natural language capabilities. Today’s search engines and knowledgebase solutions enable customers who visit your website to easily find exactly what they are looking for (assuming your knowledgebase is filled with expansive content) without having to type in broken English like Tarzan or a UFC fighter. Instead, thanks to natural language technology, customers can enter complete phrases or sentences in the “search” box, and receive relevant content instantly.

Some centers aim to spice-up self-service via the use of avatars that can “converse” with online customers via basic text chat. These animated figures are able to analyze the words the customer types into the search or chat box and provide answers in natural sentence form. It’s important, however, not to get too “cute’ with your company's self-service avatar. When programmed to tell jokes or be overly chatty, avatars can annoy and alienate rather than engage and captivate the people with whom they interact – kind of like me after one too many vodka Red Bulls at a party or for breakfast.


Create CRM-powered customer accounts/portals.  Even customers who hate people and aim to avoid them like the plague or Adam Sandler movies still want their self-service experience to be humanized and personal.

The best customer care organizations satisfy such universal human desires by creating customized, CRM-powered portals for each existing/returning customer. These portals are, in essence, personalized web pages where customers can access their detailed account information (e.g., balances, past transactions; pending orders, etc.) as well as receive subliminal messages that compel them to buy additional products and services they don’t need.


Make it easy to reach a live agent. Giving online customers easy access to your call center agents isn’t the ultimate objective of your web self-service strategy, but it still must be a part of it. Not every customer who begins a self-service search or transaction is going to find exactly what they are looking for, either because their issue is complex or because they are not very bright. Also, some customers simply don’t feel comfortable completing purchases online. Hiding your email web form, chat/web call-back box, or phone number from online visitors – or, worse, not providing such contact options at all – is no way to foster customer loyalty, and could result in a lot of lost revenue.

Just keep in mind that there will always be those customers who don’t ever want to let go of your call center’s hand – even for the most routine transactions that could be done online. If you have a lot of customers like this, consider implementing a “Leave the Nest” strategy, where such callers are routed to a special pool of agents trained to provide abysmal service. Once these customers endure a few calls with an agent who incessantly stutters and lisps while babbling on about their love of model trains and kite building, the customers are likely to give web self-service another shot.
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In last week’s “Off Center” post, I listed some of the best agent recruiting practices I’ve seen during the 17 years I’ve spent breaking into call centers illegally. Seven or eight of you even read that post. The rest of you I assume were too busy scouring the local highway underpasses in search of people to fill vacancies in your center.

While a comprehensive and strategic recruiting program is certainly key to attracting the right type of agents your call center seeks, careful assessment of all applicants is still essential to make sure that they truly have what it takes to endure customer abuse, cramped cubicles and headset hair for years on end, or at least through orientation.


High-Tech, High-Touch Hiring

After the recruitment and early screening phase, the best-run call centers utilize a holistic blend of technology and hands-on human tactics to help select the best candidates for the job. These tools and tactics include:  

Realistic job previews. Research has shown that one of the most common reasons why employees leave a call center within a year – besides the night terrors and indigestion – is a disconnect between what the employee envisioned the job entailing and what it actually involved. It’s very common for call centers – eager to “sell themselves” to prospective employees – to shade over some of the less desirable aspects of the job (e.g., the pay, the customers, the hours, the customers, the back spasms, the growth opportunities, the customers) during the recruiting and hiring phase. While this tactic may help the center attract and acquire new agents, it usually doesn’t take long for those new agents to realize that the “positive culture” they were told about refers mostly to what’s growing in the breakroom refrigerator. 

Top call centers develop comprehensive job previews that show – and sometimes even let prospective agents experience first-hand – the attractive as well as the challenging and mundane aspects of work in a front-line customer care environment. Job previews can take several forms, including but not limited to:
  • Detailed tours of the call center
  • Listening in on actual customer calls 
  • Videos of agents on the job
  • Candid conversations with the center’s existing agents
  • Readings from diaries of recently deceased agents.
The goal of job previews is not to deceive candidates, nor to scare them away. A good video-based job preview, for example, could include an agent handling a call with a happy and satisfied customer, then a call with a customer with a complex issue that isn’t easy to resolve – all followed by a casual conversation with the agent about what medications they take to cope with all the calls in that second category.


Pre-hire agent assessment tools. Hiring solutions specialists have made big advancements in applicant assessment software for call centers in recent years, helping to make agent selection more of a science than a roll of the dice.  

Today’s best pre-hire agent assessment solutions are primarily web-based and can be taken by applicants anytime, anywhere. Most are complex product suites with a range of modules and reporting tools that call centers can customize to fit their specific dysfunctional culture. Following are some of the common key components of the leading pre-hire solutions:
  • Skills assessment. Assesses a candidate’s ability to listen, enter data accurately and solve problems in a state of total panic.
  • Personality assessment. Ensures that candidate’s general traits, values and attitudes don’t match that of a serial killer or professional hockey player.
  • Work habits assessment. Gauges the level of dependability, professionalism and customer service orientation, as well as the willingness to not whine about weekend shifts or numbness in the extremities.   
  • Motivation assessment. Assesses a candidate’s ability to lie about how excited they are to handle call after call for hours on end.
  • Call simulations. Much like a flight simulator, call simulators enable call center managers to see if a candidate takes off and lands smoothly or crashes and burns in realistic customer support situations.
 
Multi-tier interviews. As powerful as today’s pre-hire assessment solutions are, in the end, people – not technology – hire people. Assessment products are great for helping to separate potentially qualified candidates from potential sociopaths, but live interviews with key supervisory and management staff is still the best way to ensure your center is hiring highly capable agents who don’t spit when they speak.

A multi-tier interview process is the method of choice in most top call centers. This process begins with each candidate who makes it through the screening and early assessment stages completing an initial interview with a member of the center’s supervisory staff, who pleasantly asks a series of behavioral-based questions before viciously insulting the candidate’s mother. This is to see if the candidate can handle the level of abuse and psychological torment indicative of a customer service environment.

Candidates who impress the supervisor are invited to interview with one (or more) of the call center managers. Those who don’t flub up this second interview then get passed on to one or more of the call center’s senior managers – e.g., a director and/or vice president – who ask a few additional key questions while polishing their golf clubs.

Following the final interview, the management and supervisory staff involved gather together to discuss each candidate and decide who makes the cut. They then ask HR to check each lucky candidate’s references, criminal background and pee before extending a job offer. 

Note: Some centers even get their most experienced agents involved in the interview process – tapping their intimate knowledge of the front-line position. Doing so not only makes for more comprehensive interviews, it shows senior agents that the organization truly values their insight and input despite barely paying them a living wage.  

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