Practical suggestions to improve a call center

Many customers find it difficult to access the call centers of large organisations, such as banks, telephone companies and government departments. They have to wait a long time for the call to be answered, and had to go through a maze of automated messages.

Here are some practical tips to improve the situation:

a) Have different telephone numbers for different languages. There is no need to ask someone to indicate the language, as it is identified by the specific number.

b) The first question for the automated message should be "press 1 to talk to a person or 2 to go through the automated system".

c) The next question should be optional "Enter your account number if available, press 0 to bypass".

With this simple change, the customer experience would be improved tremendously, without any additional workload for your call center.

Here is another tip, Train your call center staff to identify the routine inquiries (which they can handle) and the specialized inquiries (which they cannot). For the specialized inquiries, get the name and contact number of the customer and get the specialized staff to call back. Most people have mobile phones and would be happy to receive the return call.

Tan Kin Lian