Traditional customer service call centers, regardless of the industry, measure their effectiveness by standard metrics, such as: How quickly do customer
service representatives answer calls? How
many calls do they handle in an hour? In a
day? How many abandoned calls do they
get?
While those measurements are important, they are not a barometer to tell you
how well you are doing your job as a call
center. Those measurements simply reflect
the daily service every call center should
provide. The more important thing to
measure is: Are we satisfying the customer
by successfully dealing with his or her
problems or questions? It’s customer satisfaction that counts, says Mary Beth
Jenkins, chief operating officer with UPMC
Health Plan.
Smart Business spoke with Jenkins
about high-touch customer service and
how it increases overall customer service.
How would you define ‘high-touch’ customer
service?
Traditionally, customer service at a call
center is defined as waiting for people to
call in with a question and then answering
the question or solving the caller’s problem. A high-touch approach to customer
service is to begin a proactive approach, to
anticipate what questions or issues callers
will have down the road.
Also, a high-touch approach means evaluating ‘first-call resolution,’ which is
resolving the caller’s issue the first time he
or she calls.
How can a company anticipate the problems
or issues its customers will have?
You can only do this by gathering data
that you accumulate over time, which is
based on the types of questions for which
the customers contact the call center. By
studying the call data, you can learn what
areas of your program require more
detailed descriptions and information. As a
response to the data gathered, call center
employees can reach out and educate
members or customers in a more personalized and proactive way telephonically
about the services or programs offered.
When you anticipate in this way, you
reduce the odds that you will get the same
calls or those types of calls in the future. If
you educate your customers on the front
end, you are improving customer satisfaction and warding off issues before they
develop.
Does high-touch service make sense in this
high-tech era?
The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. You must understand that in this era
you have to be able to service your customer in multiple ways. Needless to say,
you need to provide the kind of online or
automated 24-7 service that customers
demand, so they can perform tasks when
and where they want to, and which do not
require interaction with a customer service
representative.
However, no matter how advanced and
user-friendly the technology is that you
offer, you will still have a vast majority of
people who want to call in and talk to a
human about an issue. This requires an
investment in terms of human capital on
the part of a company to maintain the people needed to provide that service. But in
customer service, we understand that
member retention is costly and keeping
members happy has a direct correlation to
retention.
What are examples of high-touch service?
One good example is to monitor ‘first-call
resolution.’ To achieve this goal, you need
to empower your call center employees.
That is, give them direct access to supervisors and direct access to other departments. This enables them to get the help
they need to solve the caller’s problem
without having to pass the caller on to
someone else. It is also important to
streamline the number of customer ‘touch
points.’ The whole key is to minimize hand-offs. If you need to, you can promise to give
the customer a call back after the issue is
resolved.
We have formalized this process and
refer to it as the ‘close the loop’ program.
This ensures that we do not overpromise
and underdeliver.
Having first-call resolution means spending more time on each call and handling
fewer calls per hour, but it is also part of a
more important value: service excellence.
Is high-touch service worth the investment
from a business standpoint?
When you look at things like first-call resolution, you see that by solving a member’s
problem on the first call you will prevent
future calls from the member on that issue.
That’s a cost benefit right there. If you
spend more time on a call and you get it
right, you avoid added calls down the line.
That’s not only the right thing to do; it is
also the cost-efficient thing to do.
High-touch service means exactly that.
It’s the right thing for your customer and
for your business.
MARY BETH JENKINS is the chief operating officer for UPMC
Health Plan. Reach her at [email protected] or (412) 454-7764.
