Banks, utility providers, phone companies, even parts of government seem to be repeatedly on the receiving end of complaints, criticism, and even official investigation, for failings in their service to customers
But while the focus is on the pained consumer, what about those that have to feel the brunt of an organisation's mistakes - the customer service agent? Many times call centre agents have to deal with the same complaints over and over again. Why? Because organisations often lack the processes, solutions or structure to truly understand and tackle the problems its customers face.
In reality, the customer service centre holds invaluable information about customer insight, organisations often rely on market research, focus groups, and anecdotal evidence from around the company.
Feedback customers give over the phone, in letters, in emails, across social media and in text messages will contain all the clues a company needs to better understand the voice of their customers. What's more, provided they are harnessed correctly, these insights could help to inform more effective business strategy, product development and customer service strategies.
Listening to the voice of the customer will not only benefit your business as a whole, it will also make the life of your customer service agents a lot easier. With call centre staff retention rates one of the lowest of any industry, it is important for organisations to start thinking more about the well-being of its front-line operation.
Contact centres are responsible for thousands of interactions with customers each day, but only a small proportion of these opportunities for deeper insight are captured or analysed. Equally, call recording systems contain more valuable information: the feedback of thousands of customers about what is right and wrong with your products and service.
According to a recent survey of senior customer service and contact centre management carried out by the CCA and sponsored by Verint, just one in five businesses are satisfied they are using their customer data to its full potential. The majority of respondents to the CCA study believed that they could gain more insights from the customer service data they hold (voiced by 79 percent of respondents), and 82% agreed that insights gleaned from customer interactions could influence the products their companies provide. The study further places disconnect between customer service and the rest of the business into sharp focus.
The challenge is that a lot of useful nuggets of customer insight don't lend themselves to being logged in databases or other 'structured' formats for easy retrieval and analysis. They're asides, quips, reactions and comments customers make to agents in web chat, or on social media, but which nonetheless provide invaluable feedback.
This is where the right technology can make all the difference. Speech analytics have reached a level of maturity and affordability where it can transcribe to text the content of every call. The content is 'unstructured' but the right tools can nonetheless unlock their meaning by 'structuring' and prioritising the key concepts they contain.
If executives are to stand any chance of retaining and growing their customers and remaining competitive in such a challenging business environment, they have to pay closer heed to the voice of their customers.
With the right tools, front-line staff can better serve customers and organisations can reduce customer issues which in turn cut down on calls from disgruntled customers. Fewer unnecessary problematic calls can help increase agent job satisfaction which could translate into lower churn.
It's a win win situation.
Helen Murray, is director of consulting at Verint Systems
