9 Top tips on How to deliver customer service excellence and reduce costs
By: William Jackson
Submitted: 2009-11-19 05:10:57 | Word Count: 592
From our experience, by accomplishing these nine steps you can reduce customer service costs while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty in your service operations. Below is a brief outline summary of these nine steps, for our more detailed article on these nine steps please click on www(dot)commsdept(dot)com/toptips(dot)html
9 Golden Rules to challenge the economic downturn:
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1. Communicate the goal.
Delivering Excellent Quality of Service should be the central aim of any organisation. Everyone involved in the business, from top management to agents, needs to be aware of its importance and what they need to do to make this happen.
2. Identify cost-saving initiatives- self service
To apply self service you need to do the following: --
• Appoint a senior board member as a possible project sponsor.
• List the Top 30 simple Frequently Asked Questions across all channels (phone/correspondence and face to face) with their answers, on a monthly basis. Based on this information we can decide how to eliminate, automate and simplify them with self service.
• Plan and deploy a pro-active campaign to market your self-service.
3. Define and measure 5 contact handling performance targets across all channels.
It is crucial that all agents understand their own performance targets on the phone, face to face or with correspondence, and know how to achieve them;
4. Segment service levels.
Identify and prioritise the different types of calls so that the most important ones are answered 100% of the time and no calls are abandoned,
5. Make it easy for customers to contact you.
Give the customer choices of multiple channels to contact you anytime, anyhow: Phone, fax, email, SMS, Instant Messenger, Web call me back, online, recorded messages and the option to leave a message.
6. Make the technology work for you.
Set up automatic routines in your phone system so calls can be redirected to other teams/sites at busy times or when there is a staff shortage. Set up live alarms in your call centre software to alert a supervisor when predefined call limits have been reached,
7. Improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
By deploying the screen popping software, agents can view the telephone number of the caller, and if it is an existing customer, their name, address, a/c number, and any notes/history
8. Training
Agents need to be trained and trained well in multiple areas. Diverse agent skills allow them to be re-assigned to other areas when needed.
9. Telecom audit
Undertake a hardware/software telecom audit to ensure you are getting the best out of your telephone systems, call logging software and web sites. Furthermore check your land line telecom, mobile phones and WAN bills monthly to ensure you are using all the services you are paying for, cancel any unused services and constantly reduce costs where possible.
Communications Department have worked with many organisations over the last 6 years helping them to improve their customer service and reduce costs, and we can help you implement these nine top tips as we have done it before. For one of our customers, Great Western Ambulance Service, we reduced their emergency 999 incoming ring time from 11 to 5 seconds, while for Camden Council, we undertook a telecom audit on an annual spend of £1.5million (British pounds) and saved them £500,000.
For our more detailed article on the above nine top tips please click on www(dot)commsdept(dot)com/toptips(dot)html
For further information please contact Communications Department Ltd. Tel: + 44 (0) 208 127 8302, email: jtanner@communications-department(dot)co(dot)uk
Web: www(dot)communications-department(dot)co(dot)uk
Author Resource:-
James Tanner in the Managing Director of Communications Department Ltd. Based in Great Britain, Communications Department are cost-effective telecom specialists focussing on call handling optimisation and business performance improvements. Email me: jtanner@communications-department.co.uk
