The Best Service is No Service

Because every contact center collects agent notes, stores e-mail or Web chat threads, and records phone calls, there is a huge potential gold mine of “listening data” already available. A range of text and speech analysis tools (many of which were developed in response to security agencies’ need to tap phone calls and monitor huge quantities of data) exist to enable the capture of valuable information

FIGURE 7.1: TWO LEVELS OF LISTENING AND RESPONSE

staff are not able to deliver service in the way customers want because they do not feel empowered to do so. This lack of empowerment can take many forms: either the staff believe they are not empowered, or the rules, policies, and processes may dictate that staff cannot deliver the service the way customers want. We will consider each issue in turn

The first prerequisite to making accountability stick is sponsorship from the top down (as it is with every type of change management). If the CEO or managing director doesn’t think ownership is important, then why should those who report to him or her? At Amazon, Jeff Bezos championed accountability actively, participating in the weekly operations meetings where progress and actions on contact drivers were discussed and tracked. He made it clear from his actions that accountability was important: any executive owner of a contact category who could not explain why the rate (expressed as contacts per order, CPO) had gone up or down was challenged by Bezos, who repeated that this was an important part of the job of the contact owners. This steady pressure from the top drove the behavior he wanted: contact owners spent time with the customer service area in advance of the meetings so as to understand how their contacts were trending and why

Some organizations’ reporting structures make it harder to assign accountability

Analyzing root causes and identifying the owners of those root causes apply equally to complaints and repeats, but many parts of the company will be in denial that they are the causes of these more serious issues

If there are issues in identifying accountability for contacts, we recommend applying the “Five Why’s” technique. This analysis process drills down through the layers of causes to reach the real root cause and therefore clarify the accountability. Here’s an example:
Why QuestionAnswer
1.
Why did the customer call (or e-mail or send us a letter)?
She received a letter warning her that she would lose her power, when in fact she had already paid.
2.
Why did she get the letter from us

Our payments system did not know she had already paid.
3.
Why didn’t the system know she had paid?
It takes three days to update certain payment types after payment.
4.
Why doesn’t the system make allowances for payment methods?
The system doesn’t analyze the payment history to look at previous payment history and timing. If no payment is received, we send the letter to get the money in the door.
5.
Why doesn’t the system vary business rules by payment history?
We have a one-size-fits-all business rule, because it’s a simpler way for us to manage the wide range of customer types

There are four states of lack of information, all of which result in limited accountability:
Lack of InformationIssue
Contact reasons not reported
The customer-facing areas track and report volumes, not the nature of contacts.
Too few reasons captured (fewer than ten)
Use of “top ten” categories that are too generic, such as billing, credit, or payments, often driven by customers’ selection in the IVR. These reasons often span many departments (that is, they are not MECE).
Too many reasons captured (more than sixty)
The nature of contacts is reported at such a granular level that it

erceived to be unreliable, incomprehensible, or too complex.
Reporting “what,” not “why”
This process involves reporting what was done for the customer—for example, “Updated system
x
,” rather than why the contact was necessary. Only the “why” helps an organization understand accountability