Customer service on front line

Effective customer service is vital for businesses. Photo / Thinkstock

Who hasn't been driven to distraction through interaction or lack thereof with a contact centre? Just take Aimee Jones, whose brand new Acer laptop suffered a technical problem last month.

The retailer told her to contact Acer, which listed its 0800 number as being manned from 9am to 5pm. But it didn't open until 11am. "It was their New Zealand site yet the times listed were in an Australian time zone," says Jones.

If that wasn't enough, the contact centre handler assumed Jones didn't understand technology and "spouted" standard responses to her without listening to the problem.

For large and small companies, having a contact centre reduces business wastage and cost. Get them wrong, however, and you lose a customer for life.

Many companies blundered into offering telephone-based customer service in the 1990s. They often had under-trained staff, inappropriate staff scheduling and poor technology.

The world has moved on and technology, good processes, access to information and intensive training are crucial to ensure New Zealand's customer service representatives can deliver on customer expectations, says Kathryn Starr, chairwoman of the Contact Centre Institute of New Zealand.

Starr says technology allows important customer information and notes from calls to be logged against a customer's record so all contact centre staff can handle future calls effectively.

"Where possible, customers like you to know who they are when they call you. Caller Line ID Match software is available that can bring up a caller's customer information on screen when they phone in. They also want to speak to someone who can understand their issue and take ownership within the first call." A knowledge database can assist with that.

Contact centre trainer Ann Mayer, of Telephos, says companies think courtesy and using the telephone effectively is common sense, but it isn't to a lot of people.

With incoming calls, answering the phone with a gabble so that the caller can't pick up the name of the organisation or the person's name is bad.

Every communication with customers gives an impression, and every customer is an individual with unique expectations, says Mayer's Telephos colleague Karen Campbell.

Contact centres need to listen to customers to understand what they need and then find a solution.

"Taping and listening to our calls can be an enlightening experience. Just like seeing a video of yourself - it is not always what you expect."

In New Zealand, customers such as Jones dislike foreign-based contact centres where the staff may lack empathy.

These cross-cultural issues are something the newly formed Z Energy has recognised.

"It didn't take long for it to become clear that Z customers wanted to speak with people who understood the New Zealand context," says Sheena Thomas, Z Energy's communications adviser.

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work either. "At Mercury Energy, customer service staff are trained to identify the customer's need quickly," says contact centre manager Ruth Turnbull.

"Some customers are really connected and want to discuss our products, whereas other customers ... simply want quick resolution to their enquiry. We identify their need upfront and make that our priority."