If I owned a petrol station and had pumps that refused to give petrol to 1 visitor in 20 how long do you think I would be in business?

If every 20 times I queue at a supermarket checkout the "CSR" refuses to serve me, how likely am I to go back?

So why does anyone think it is OK for CCs to ignore the customer 5% (or 2% or 3%) of the time?


Alan ...........

How long will you queue in a supermarket? or for petrol?
I bet it is alot longer than you will wait on a telephone line to be serviced by a CC. The fact is that CC's are there for convenience, if you ring a CC and have to wait 1min, 5min or longer you are going to think 'i'll call back later' because it is easy. If you are in the supermarket you have got your shopping then queue up you are going to wait, you are not going to go to the asda down the road and start again.
Measuring abandon rate is the acceptance of reality, they are not ignoring the customer but realising that in a number of cases the customer will abandon the attempt to use the service. You can then manage the level of abandon to that which you consider acceptable.

Basically 0% abandon is (almost) impossible.

(P.S. does anyone know the failure rate of petrol pumps?)

To continue this discussion, depending on the business, the customer callback percentage for various industries is anywhere from 75% to 95%. It would be great to catch everyone on the first try, but the odds are that most people will call back - not everyone, surely. But most.

I agree that no one wants to ignore or offend their customers, but as Alex points out, 0% abandoned is nearly impossible. Remember that some people abandon when they discover that they have dialed a wrong number, othersare interrupted by another call on their other line, or the doorbell range, etc, etc. Staffing to a 3%-5% abandoned rate simply recognizes that some calls will abandon, regardless of your efforts.

To answer Alan’s original question, the reason people feel it is ‘ok’ to let a percentage of people down is because when they go to work they adopt a mind set that is neither natural nor their own.

What they adopt when they pass through the door to work is a ‘corporate’ mindset whereby suddenly everything you hold dear as a human being must be changed because, ‘we can’t possibly achieve that’. The old 'focus on what you cannot achieve rather than what you can' ethos.

Sorry Brent, but for me your answer appears to perpetuate that mindset. The rate of genuine abandonment (e.g. get to the check-out to realise you have forgotten your wallet type scenario) is so low as to be not worth calculating. The abandonment referred to here is far more to do with queues that are so long one cannot be bothered to wait. This is to do with infrastructural inadequacies NOT customer cock ups.

Research has suggested that REAL abandonment rates (i.e. those soley to do with wrong numbers, found the info after all etc etc) are as HIGH as 0.05% only. This means that orgs should be trying for 100% regardless. After all, if you are wishing to truely serve your customer(s), regardless of their reasons for calling, they will think more of you and increase their loyalty…

David

David,
I know that this topic is very near and dear to you, old friend - however, after having watched a number of well-meaning companies close their doors for good the past year or two, I must say that someone, somewhere, somehow must be responsiblefor balancing excellent service and reasonable costs. I'm not sure it's fair to assume that I and people who have similar operational responsibilities 'focus on what you cannot achieve rather than what you can', just as it is unfair of me to presume that every person who advocates excellent customer service must have limited mathematical prowess. Both are untrue, I'm sure.

It brings to mind the very well-meaning Human Resources Director who once proclaimed during a budget session that "All people deserve above-average pay!". While undoubtedly true, it is a mathematical impossibility.

But back to the abandoned rate question. Most call centers experience a gradual increase in call volume during the course of the day - it peaks, then declines, perhaps peaks again (the double camel hump), then trails off until the next day. Staffing high enough to a 3 or 4 hour peak in the middle of the day to handle 100% of all calls would increase wage costs by nearly 20% in most call centers. During the shoulder periods around the peak(s), there would be massive paid non-productive time. Please understand, I AM open to new and exciting ways of resolving this issue.

Further, let's define who the customer is. The customers are the people who pay you for your products and services, to be sure. But your employees are also your customers - your employees have families, bills, children, weddings, funerals, rent or mortgage payments, car payments.... we OWE the employees sound business management practices that ensure that their livelihood is not interrupted. Even if it may appear to be 'corporate' to do so.

The owners of the company are customers, too. In a publicly held company, this could be thousands of people, many who invested their hard-earned money in the company. We OWE them a reasonable return on investment, or we're not doing our jobs. It's about balance.

I will crusade alongside you, David, on behalf of excellent customer service. I have thoroughly investigated your excellent web site, and read the material that you have sent me in the past. I believe in what you do, and your approach is profound. I simply cannot, however, submit to the idea that being a guardian of a company's bottom line and being an advocate of customer service are, by their nature, mutually exclusive.

Brent

Hi All

Just to clarify one thing - Alan's starting point is that if the pumps refused to give service this can be compared to having abandoned calls. I would like to suggest that this is not strictly the case - abandon calls should be likened to arriving at the pumps and not being able to IMMEDIATELY pull up to a vacant one. Instead you may wait until one becomes free and then you move up and have your transaction completed.

The pump refusing scenario is actually like where a call is accepted into the call centre, route dto an agent and then he/she decides to refuse the call and hang up.

What I would like to understand though is why it is absolutely necessary to have calls answered within a few seconds but it seems ok to many companies to take 6, 8 or even 24 hours to answer an email - surely they should be trying to provide excellent service by email also?

Dermot

Brent

You are of course correct: keeping an eye on the cost base is critical. However, what I would take issue with is the assumption that is implicit in your statement. That assumption is that excellent customer service is overly expensive; i.e. will detract from maximising long term profitability.

It’s a simple fact that ‘excellent’ customer service actually costs nothing more than the mediocre customer service we all ‘enjoy’ today. What makes that ‘crucial’ difference is the engagement and application of the individuals working for you. Taking the time and trouble to manage people correctly costs less than managing them badly.

My apologies if I caught you in a sweeping generalism but just take a look around you and more importantly LISTEN to the words and phrases used by the overwhelming majority of people responsible for people. Any psychologist will confirm to you that the language people use in normal conversation is a direct reflection of their mindset at the time. Also, as people become more pressurised, regardless of whether it is work or play, their natural tendency is to become defensive and a defensive mindset produces a focus on what cannot be achieved.

Back to the abandoned call rate. It’s a fact of life that life generally conspires against the best of intentions so that invariably we end up short of our targets. Where’s all this going you ask? It’s about whether to set 100% as a target and deliver 99% or set 80% and deliver 79%. Only by setting stretched targets can we ever begin to deliver what our customers deserve.

Having run an international support centre I fully understand the challenges of trying to deliver excellent customer service. I managed it by thinking doing stuff that was seen at that time as being outside acceptability. I have to say this was ONLY possible because my director had the balls and autonomy to deliver. IMHO the majority of businesses do not have that and so are hamstrung from day one and frankly little will help them out of their rut.

Your comment about owing it to staff not to disrupt their livelihood is interesting. Call me stupid (it won’t be the first time) but the surest way to fail them is to set your customer satisfaction targets low and then under deliver. Thinking that its impossible is just another example of the general focus on what cannot be achieved.

For the rest, basically we are in violent agreement.

David

PS: There is stacks of evidence that having a call answered in less than 10 seconds in itself DOES NOT deliver satisfaction. If people get real satisfaction they are prepared to wait for up to ten minutes WITHOUT detriment to real satisfaction levels.

Hi Brent, David

Excellent posts. Thanks Alan for the topic.Perfect score achievement is 100% ATTITUDE!!! Extra cost is an excuse for under performance.Probably many have not achieved a perfect score even once and therefore it may seem impossible.It is akin to climbing Mount Everest or landing on moon. Someone should achieve and rest will emulate. To achieve perfect score one should put in effort and not lose focus. After all there is POSSIBLE in IMPOSSIBLE ( Never say die ATTITUDE).

Vedula

I like your petrol analogy, but in my experience you occassionally have to wait for the car in front of you to finish before you pull up, and your tolerance and motivation to wait is amplified by the red light shaped like a pump illuminated on the dashboard. Having those experiences on occassion sets the expectations so you do not equate the "speed to pump" to be the end-all and be-all of the service experience. What about the petrol employees demeanor? Or the aesthetics of the station? Or the price, and the experience of paying and receiving the correct change? We cannot emphasize the first piece so much that in the end we equate low abadonement immediately to good customer service, or good management, or a good call center, its a superficial view and a big obvious piece but not the only one.

I don't think the concept of "justifiable losses" is an ideal, but I also have been in many centers that are over-staffed, this model is also an issue. Boredom in the office is much harder by agents who need to be on-call and available for every given moment. The refresher coaching and training tasks to keep them busy are not often sufficient. I know as a consumer, I would not want to pay more for a service or product on the off-chance that I may need to call in now and then and require an immediate answer. I would prefer the business model to offer me the most reasonable cost, and in turn I hope that they do whats needed to limit my inconvenience to maintain that cost.I can then judge the experience as a whole.

For my clients, when I review abandonement reports I always insist on a report to indicate how many seconds that the drop offs occurred. I tend to separate those that drop within 2-5 seconds and create a separate line item in reporting, as our findings have been that a high percentage will call back (over 50% in the last study we did.)There are some great learnings that occur in the process of queue-time and abandonement, caller tolerance being a primary one. Understanding who is calling you, and the level of motivation to an ad, or offer can offer a guage on how that has compelled them. It can also be very telling about competition and the marketplace. My analysis usually includes detail on how all of these points can ultimately help the organization to improve more then overstaffing ever would. They can review what the level of stimulation has been by the response, and marry that data to the behaviors in queue. From there, it is an indicator to improve the offers, messaging and stimulation is put out to customers.

That said, efficiency is a key stumbling point for most call centers. No one likes to abandon calls, but the fix is harder then adding bodies and managing resources wisely make sense for the customers, and sense for the bottom-line.

Thanks, everyone, for great posts on this topic. Again, to put things into perspective, a 3% abandoned rate is not the MINIMUM goal most call centers are trying to attain: it is the MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE abandoned rate that they will accept. If they can do better, and maintain operational balance, then great!

As an interesting aside, I had the opportunity to visit a new client late last week, and you won't believe their service level goal: 100%. Their exact words were, with a smile, "..and lowering that goal is not an option." I told them about our discussion within this forum, and that service level goals are a hot topic. This group has one of the best employee- and customer-centric mindsets that I have ever seen. To be honest, it was quite refreshing - they have made the decision to pay what it costs to have that kind of service level. I can't wait to dig a little deeper on this project - I'll keep you posted, if they don't mind my using their info here.

Brent