Customer support is a balance, it needs to be cost effective for the company offering the service so you don’t want more service reps than you need. This can be expensive. On the other hand, you need enough customer service representatives so that your customer isn’t on the phone for 12 minutes. A waiting customer is an annoyed customer. And you are really playing with fire if you are in an easily duplicated industry Such as EZ Pay is with its Escape pre pay card.

EZ Pay has some serious questions to ask itself, because they have lowered their costs by outsourcing to India (or some such place). I am all for outsourcing, in fact I actively promote it. However if you as the company are going to benefit from reduced costs & in this case reduced quality of service, then surely you have an obligation to have a reasonable number of reps answering the phones.

Outsourcing is about bringing down costs, while maintaining quality and speed of delivery. It should not be seen as a cost only exercise. EZ Pay with its Escape Card have it wrong. The only thing they achieve when the make customers wait 12 minutes for a simple question, is to drive customers to one of the 100 other Pre Pay cards available in the market today.

Pick up your socks EZ Pay. Call me and I will show you how if you wish.

How damaged is your brand if you reduce customer service to a list of answers on a website? Is the potential savings so big that you are willing to alienate your customers and drive them to despair … trying to reach you? What’s more, how does a set of questions on a website, ensure customer retention, prospect retention, deliver great feelings of awesome customer service or up-sell your customer?

The answer

==== It doesn’t ====

What I think many companies will learn the hard way is that automation is great, but you cannot remove the human element from good customer service. Companies will see their customer churn rates ever increase because people that don’t want customer service are those that are looking for the cheapest solution. If you can’t be the cheapest, you will loose out. The truly valuable customers, those that maintain a relationship with their providers will choose to stay with companies that offer “Good Customer Service”.

It has again been a while since the blog was tended too. Life gets busy as you can imagine and the blog has fallen by the wayside. If anyone is still out there, be of good cheer we are back, and will be posting thoughts and ideas on a more regular basis. A few things have changed though and here they are:

Keep an eye out on things, we are still here, and still going strong.

They have developed the software themselves and seem to have had reasonable success. As a 3rd party watching the process I have noticed a couple of things.

This automated application process did indeed reduce the number of valid applications from 700 to 100. That of course was the general idea. For many internal, simple roles that are infact automated themselves, this may actually be a good thing.

The question I raised though was this: Would the automation process actually drive away the kind of candidates that you may actually want?

To explain, take sales for example. If I were a sales executive applying for a job, I would want to be able to sell myself in some way. To be channeled down a pathway would put me off, as I would feel that they were looking for a “me too” person. Not someone with unique skills.

Another example, A network engineer, If I were an engineer, I would want to show case my skills. Especially if I knew I was good. Would it annoy me to be lead down a path? Would I pre judge what kind of person they were looking for? Would I feel that they were after a “me too” engineer?

Automation is great, it provides great efficiency’s in running business. Is recruitment a place you can automate? Can you cut corners carefully enough to make gains in the process?

“No one is available to take your call as today is our annual chill out day, please call us back on Monday”

What a bold and courageous move. Imagine the brownie points you would get from your staff. And how big an impact would it have on your customers? I am sure if you gave them notice, they would be fine or in fact be quite impressed.

This is the first time I have come across such a great idea implemented in action. In these challenging times, it does good to be creative.

A great resource for employers and employees alike.

Everyone is different. One of the easiest ways around clashing personalities and environment is to only employ people with like minds. So each person is comfortable within the created environment. Of course this is not easy to do, especially within a tight labour market where you take the best you can find.

Some people thrive from an open plan office environment, others find it too distracting. Maybe there is a way to mix it up. Other times some personalities can become overpowering for others and stifle their ability to be highly productive.

One of the best ways to ensure the balance between personality and environment is right is to meet with your people often, informally to see how they are finding things. Also get management to have the personality and environment balance on their agenda’s. Watch how relationships are going between staff.

Creating the right kind of environment is a key element to creating a happy workplace for your staff.

A company that I work with has just moved their socialite into an area all by herself. So in 2 months from this date we will see if she is still around. It is a hard balance when it comes to social people. Obviously being social carries a risk of being less productive than someone that is a bit more reserved and quiet.

However if someone is very good at their job and a social person too what do you do? One thing you don’t do is isolate them. It is important to find ways that can cater to their need to socialise, while still maintaining the high work standards.

I will give you an update in 2 months time.

While the tips that Microsoft provide, procrastination is still in my opinion the biggest killer to home based employees. Because their time is paid for by the employer, the employer can rightly expect the same level (or in theory more) productivity from home based workers. But at home it is easy to become distracted.

One day this phenomenon will become more common place, until good systems can be wrapped around it though it will remain a rarity among companies, rather than the norm.

The interesting thing is that because it is non customer facing work, all their customers don’t know that they send some of their work off shore. The question becomes then “Is this practice deceiving your customers? “. Personally I don’t think so. Though I am sure others will disagree.

Ultimately as a company you are contracted to deliver a service. Surely the way you deliver that service should be up to you. The issue is not so much whether you do off shore resourcing rather it is about what level of transparency you will provide your customers.

It is a choice each company that send work offshore needs to make. Some will be transparent and offer lower rates for work done offshore, others will keep that portion of their service very quiet. The concern you may have if you do keep things quiet is what will happen when (if ever) your customers find out you have been sending their work off shore?