General principles
1. Communicate
The board needs to define how the company is going to offer customer service excellence and how this should be implemented in detail by all staff.
2. Measure
Define, implement and review monthly measures across all channels. Ensure five contact handling targets per person are met monthly.
3. Segment
Segment types of contact: Prioritise urgent calls so they are answered in 1 ring.
4. Technology
When a call or email is received, automatically route it to the next available agent in any of your sites worldwide.
What is self–service?
Self–service is where no agent is involved in customer contact.
Types of self–service include:
- Interactive web sites
- Recorded messages (e.g. the DVA Northern Ireland tel: + 44 (0) 1204 770768)
- Telephone automated payments: (e.g. Norwich City Council tel: +44 (0) 344 8303333)
- Pro–active automatic alerts by email/SMS
- PC terminals and in-house telephones in your reception for customer access
- Direct debit
Self–service can be applied to simple issues across all contact channels (phone, correspondence and face to face).
Reduce non complex enquiries
1. Automate
A housing association could register a social housing applicant for automated updates on the progress of an application by email or SMS.
2. Eliminate
Where customers need to make regular payments, e.g. council tax, instead of paying over the counter we could encourage and incentivise them to pay by direct debit.
3. Simplify
Organisations could publish and give prominence to simple information like opening hours, e.g. DVA Northern Ireland has a recorded message on their phone system and a clear message on their web site.
How to overcome self–service challenges
1. Get a sponsor
For a self service initiative to be successful, it is vital that an organisation has a senior level sponsor.
2. Write a Top 30 FAQs
Record and evaluate monthly the top 30 simple FAQs across all channels to ensure self–service channels are providing relevant information.
3. Get feedback
Receive monthly feedback from customers and staff. Most importantly, ensure improvements based on that feedback are implemented.
4. Monitor self–service statistics
Monitor self service statistics monthly to identify which are the most popular and unpopular channels used.
Based on this feedback, the self service channels can be modified.
Marketing self–service
Newly implemented self-service options need to be pro-actively marketed across all channels, e.g. Norwich City Council promoted self-service under the tagline “Do it online”. Customers need to be encouraged to use them on a regular basis. They need to be implemented properly and made easy to use, otherwise the uptake will be very slow.
The cost of customer contact
Chart demonstrating savings made by reducing direct customer contact
A recent survey found that the average cost per contact was £15 for face to face, £12 for postal enquiries, £5 for phone enquiries and 6p for online. For 120,000 contacts it would cost £1.8million to manage face to face contacts, £1.44million to manage postal enquiries, £600,000 to manage the phone enquiries and just £7,200 to manage the online self-service.