The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Good Advice- Send Money
Monday - December 12, 2005 03:17 PM in
Once someone suggests something new and different to deploy in a customer service operation, sometimes within days every vendor seems to have a variation of the same suggestion. Evidently we all go to the same seminars and read the same articles. Regardless, the latest buzz topic is the poor practice of containing callers within self service by making an opt out to a live person more difficult. Just this morning I have been asked to participate in a seminar on the importance of not doing so, was solicited to read white papers on the subject, saw two best practice sales promotions from companies wanting to sell consulting services with the evils of forced containment being a priority topic, and received a newsletter quoting our research on the subject in relation to the importance of first call resolution.
I would not at all be surprised to go back 18 months and find some of these sources offering advice on how to accomplish forced containment whereas now they want to sell consulting on why it's a bad idea. Go figure.
No doubt first call resolution can be a reasonable proxy for assessing overall caller satisfaction plus the efficiency of a call center; that's not the point. Nor is the point that forcing callers to stay in the IVR is a bad idea. What is the point is I can't think of a single call center with the tools to accurately measure containment and FCR correctly anyway.
As Peter points out, a caller gives up on trying to get to an agent and hangs up. The system hardware marks this as a "contained" call. The caller tries again and fails. That's contained call #2. On the third try, the caller gets to an agent and resolves their business. To the company, the data shows they have a 66% call containment rate and maybe a 100% first call resolution score (which is often used as a measure of how well the operation is doing). But the data is bogus, the truth is the percentage of containment and first call success is zero.
It was over 20 years ago when I was selling services for a bell operating telephone company (RBOC) when I learned a truth. As a Bell rep. I found my suggestions on service quality ignored. Then when Ma Bell broke up and I, like many others, hung out a consulting shingle; I gave the very same advice and it was accepted as wise. The only difference is that as a consultant, they were paying to hear it.
So since you didn't pay anything to just read that your current performance data is likely bogus; that forcing callers to stay inside the IVR backfires and costs the company MORE money; you probably won't do anything about it. So, please send a check made out to Vocal Laboratories for $5000.00. Since you will then have paid to hear the truth, you'll have to take action.
Rick Rappe'
No doubt first call resolution can be a reasonable proxy for assessing overall caller satisfaction plus the efficiency of a call center; that's not the point. Nor is the point that forcing callers to stay in the IVR is a bad idea. What is the point is I can't think of a single call center with the tools to accurately measure containment and FCR correctly anyway.
As Peter points out, a caller gives up on trying to get to an agent and hangs up. The system hardware marks this as a "contained" call. The caller tries again and fails. That's contained call #2. On the third try, the caller gets to an agent and resolves their business. To the company, the data shows they have a 66% call containment rate and maybe a 100% first call resolution score (which is often used as a measure of how well the operation is doing). But the data is bogus, the truth is the percentage of containment and first call success is zero.
It was over 20 years ago when I was selling services for a bell operating telephone company (RBOC) when I learned a truth. As a Bell rep. I found my suggestions on service quality ignored. Then when Ma Bell broke up and I, like many others, hung out a consulting shingle; I gave the very same advice and it was accepted as wise. The only difference is that as a consultant, they were paying to hear it.
So since you didn't pay anything to just read that your current performance data is likely bogus; that forcing callers to stay inside the IVR backfires and costs the company MORE money; you probably won't do anything about it. So, please send a check made out to Vocal Laboratories for $5000.00. Since you will then have paid to hear the truth, you'll have to take action.
Rick Rappe'
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