outsourced call centers
That’s why call center testimonials can be an important part of your search. It’s easy for any call center to say they’re great. It even seems to be easy for centers that aren’t great to say they’re great. Testimonials, however, let us see if someone else is willing to stake their credibility on that statement. [Read more...]
None of these questions solve any problems. Nothing has gotten fixed. But of course, nothing could be fixed yet. In a customer service encounter, these are just the questions and statements that we use to understand what a customer’s problem is and how we should then go about solving it. These statements are just part of the process.
And that statement is just part of the problem.
Yes the purpose of this stage in the customer service process is to gather information. However, something much deeper and more important is happening that can be easily overlooked. The customer is not only relating data; he or she is venting. Sharing. Unloading frustrations. Desperately wanting to know that somebody cares.
Do we care? [Read more...]
Everyone has a story to tell. But some people know how to tell their tales really well.
Meet Karen.
If you’re not one of the million or more people who have already met her on YouTube, you’ll find Karen speaks pretty quickly and may either completely captivate or completely overwhelm you. But whether you’re a fan of her rapid-fire storytelling or not, she has a number of lessons from a customer’s point of view that she teaches us in this four-minute video. So click Play, follow along, and see if you can pick up the seven customer-service lessons that we have identified below.
Somewhere, in the distance, a coyote howled.
“Hello?” I ventured. “Are you still there?”
Static crackled, and then a voice. “Yes, yes I’m here,” she answered. More static. Was I ordering a burger or trying to connect with the space shuttle? And then, finally, the update. “I’m just trying to get an answer to your question.”
Really? That’s what she was doing? I had asked what toppings were on the new Extra Deluxe Burger that they had constantly advertising recently. I was kind of surprised that that information wasn’t readily available to the staff. Was I really the first one to ever ask this?
But what really surprised me was that [Read more...]
But just like anything that gets bottled and pushed out in huge quantities, some of the flavor may just seem to get stale or tired sometimes. There is some kind of strange aftertaste that slips in there all too often, and we feel like we haven’t so much been cared for as we have been read a script and given a formula. That’s why, every now and then, we give an extra-large tip to a waitress, or rave about a product in a blog or just in a conversation with some friends. Yes, customer service is great, but ultimately we want it to be genuine. We want to believe that we actually do matter to the company taking our money. Basic manners and getting the order right are not remarkable; that’s just an expected part of dealing with any company. Someone is polite, or gives you clear directions, or even helps you solve a problem. Any of those are great. They really are. But they should never be considered as remarkable. They should be fully expected every single time we deal with a company. And the fact that they do come as surprises or treats when we see them is proof that this very basic concept of customer service has lost something.
In a perfect world, customer service would be no more of a strategy than hugging a husband or wife would be. We would care for customers because we liked them and [Read more...]
But when it goes bad, it can be very very bad.
Take the case of Vincent Ferrari. You may already have seen his story on NBC’s Good Morning America or read about it in a blog post, or been one of the over 200,000 people to have watched the video on YouTube. But just in case you’ve missed it all, let us give you a brief recap before showing you a video.
Mr. Ferrari decided to cancel his AOL subscription, but having heard that AOL would put up a fight, he chose to tape the call. Sure enough, instead of a quick phone chat with AOL’s customer service call center, he spent over 20 minutes on the phone, including a now-famous five-minute chat with a customer retention specialist named John. While customer retention can certainly be good, as we’ve mentioned, John had a way of taking the art to a whole new level of determination… and aggravation. Despite some 18 requests by Mr. Ferrari to cancel his account, John still doggedly refused to give in, even asking at one point to speak to the 30-year-old caller’s Dad! The end, as you’ll see on the clip, is not a happy one, especially for John. [Read more...]
