Amid the chaos and celebration of an excellent Big Day In… (see Facebook for the full photo galleries) this week sees another “basics” post, looking at the work and progress of the Customer Hub.
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“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”
On the 10th of March 1876 Alexander Graham Bell uttered the above words into his curious new invention, which he called the telephone.
Ever since this time organisations have struggled to get the basic function of picking the phone up right: endless waiting times, labyrinthine push-button technology, voice-recognition software (that often doesn’t recognise voices) and staff unable to answer basic enquiries when you do finally get through - are common features of telephone handling at its worst.
In the early days of Trafford Housing Trust, calls from our customers were received all across the organisation; in each of our neighbourhood offices, at the repairs' hotline, at our head office and they were made directly to landlines and mobile phones across the business. Not surprisingly our customers experienced a poor service with fewer than 50% of calls actually being answered. The need to improve this situation has led to the establishment of our Customer Hub (Contact Centre) and some 18 months after its launch I decided it was time to reflect on whether it had achieved what we envisaged for it at its launch and what customers should expect when they contact an organisation by telephone.
Our Customer Hub now handles up to 3,000 calls per week and we manage to answer 95% of these without the caller hanging up. I think this is a tremendous improvement over what we had and I know the new service has received a great deal of positive feedback. But just being able to have your call answered is only the start of the story - you ring because you need something from us and it is pointless you calling if the person who answers the phone is unable to help you.
It is for this reason our Hub staff have not been set up as switchboard operators, following cumbersome written instructions and handing off ‘difficult’ enquiries to other more experienced staff. The Hub has a target of being able to deal with 75% of the queries you make over the telephone. This means staff receive detailed support and training and are constantly looking at ways to help with issues with which they are unfamiliar. You may not realise but details of any previous enquiries you made are logged on our computer system so in many cases the Hub staff are as well placed to help you as the actual person you have previously dealt with.
So is the Trust completely on top of how it deals with your telephone calls? Of course not. We think that there are a number of improvements we can make to the training and support of staff that will mean they are able to resolve more and more of customer enquiries at the first point of contact, we are also conducting an exercise to understand more about why customers contact us in the first place. We have found that many people are ringing us because they are chasing a previous call, or because something has gone wrong with a service we have provided them. We need to understand what we are doing wrong that causes these calls and look at ways of improving our systems to ensure such failure-related calls are reduced to an absolute minimum.
We also need to look at streamlining our procedures for dealing with the issues customers ring us about so that they are:
· As far as possible handled there and then without the need for a call back
· Are carried out efficiently, without waste and fuss
· Actually resolve the issue that you rang in about
There is a long way to go but if the starting point of customer service is a speedy, convenient and knowledgeable place to contact the Trust, then I think the Hub can be the cornerstone of our desire to have great basics.
*********
“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”
| Try texting on that. |
Ever since this time organisations have struggled to get the basic function of picking the phone up right: endless waiting times, labyrinthine push-button technology, voice-recognition software (that often doesn’t recognise voices) and staff unable to answer basic enquiries when you do finally get through - are common features of telephone handling at its worst.
In the early days of Trafford Housing Trust, calls from our customers were received all across the organisation; in each of our neighbourhood offices, at the repairs' hotline, at our head office and they were made directly to landlines and mobile phones across the business. Not surprisingly our customers experienced a poor service with fewer than 50% of calls actually being answered. The need to improve this situation has led to the establishment of our Customer Hub (Contact Centre) and some 18 months after its launch I decided it was time to reflect on whether it had achieved what we envisaged for it at its launch and what customers should expect when they contact an organisation by telephone.
Our Customer Hub now handles up to 3,000 calls per week and we manage to answer 95% of these without the caller hanging up. I think this is a tremendous improvement over what we had and I know the new service has received a great deal of positive feedback. But just being able to have your call answered is only the start of the story - you ring because you need something from us and it is pointless you calling if the person who answers the phone is unable to help you.
It is for this reason our Hub staff have not been set up as switchboard operators, following cumbersome written instructions and handing off ‘difficult’ enquiries to other more experienced staff. The Hub has a target of being able to deal with 75% of the queries you make over the telephone. This means staff receive detailed support and training and are constantly looking at ways to help with issues with which they are unfamiliar. You may not realise but details of any previous enquiries you made are logged on our computer system so in many cases the Hub staff are as well placed to help you as the actual person you have previously dealt with.
So is the Trust completely on top of how it deals with your telephone calls? Of course not. We think that there are a number of improvements we can make to the training and support of staff that will mean they are able to resolve more and more of customer enquiries at the first point of contact, we are also conducting an exercise to understand more about why customers contact us in the first place. We have found that many people are ringing us because they are chasing a previous call, or because something has gone wrong with a service we have provided them. We need to understand what we are doing wrong that causes these calls and look at ways of improving our systems to ensure such failure-related calls are reduced to an absolute minimum.
We also need to look at streamlining our procedures for dealing with the issues customers ring us about so that they are:
· As far as possible handled there and then without the need for a call back
· Are carried out efficiently, without waste and fuss
· Actually resolve the issue that you rang in about
There is a long way to go but if the starting point of customer service is a speedy, convenient and knowledgeable place to contact the Trust, then I think the Hub can be the cornerstone of our desire to have great basics.
Has the Business Support Team not considered introducing a live chat session for the customer hub, this could possibly free up the total amount of calls being received by the Trust. Most companies have rolled out this method, I think its a great way I think for customers to report repairs or make general enquiries. Also, this method often reassures customers that action is being noted by the organisation and that at the end of the chat session you can print view the transcript. Hope you please consider this innovation Matthew. Kind regards Shaun Wilson
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Shaun - it's an excellent idea and one that has been discussed, watch this space...
ReplyDelete