Study Reveals Customer Service is a Team Effort
US Department of Labor say most interactions require back-office staff
A call has been sounded for contact centers to focus more on
the activities of back-office employees following new research
which shows that 70 percent of interactions require these
members of staff.
The findings, from a study by the US Department of Labor,
indicate that customer service is in most instances a team
effort involving multiple departments across the organisation so
integration between the contact centre and back office is
essential.
And the study prompted Manish Sablok, director for Marketing,
Northern Europe, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, to comment:
"Contact centres are often over-policed, with unrealistic
targets often resulting in poor service, an unhappy workforce,
low morale and even strike action. But as this research shows,
there needs to be an increased focus on the monitoring of
back-office employees, in order to increase levels of
productivity across the entire enterprise.
"By realising the importance of the back-office and extending
the same customer service discipline across all departments,
companies can significantly improve customer loyalty and staff
retention."
According to recent Genesys research, the average organisation
has 3 back-office workers for every contact centre agent
involved in service delivery. In order to resolve customer
queries most efficiently, improve customer service and reduce
customer effort, there is a great need for companies to measure,
analyse and optimise productivity across both front- and
back-office employees.
To achieve this, organisations need clear visibility across all
work items, so that the appropriate information can be
effectively prioritised, distributed and managed throughout
every part of the enterprise. By doing so, enterprises can
appropriately match employee skills with tasks and easily
provide visibility of each job's progress.
Manish Sablok added:
"It's not about transforming your back office operations into a contact centre, but instead about identifying a shared common goal. Both the front- and back-offices should be working on the basis of customer and process value; employee skill sets and proficiency; employee workloads; and potential impact on costs and revenue."
About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and Optics technologies, applications and services. Info: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com.
