Customer Service

It is a fact that First Call Resolution (F.C.R) is the single most important metric within a customer service organization. Maximized F.C.R rates will drive cost to serve as well as customer satisfaction to highly competitive levels and ultimately provide a shift from cost to profit center.

With so many talented industry experts, consultants and call center management focusing on this matter, why isn’t there a simple ready made formula which can help address the issue once and for all? Why are call centers still struggling to make the tiniest improvements whilst operational excellence is so vital?

Everyone agrees that the journey to First Call Resolution starts with the Customer Service Representative (C.S.R). Who is involved and what happens next varies, is debatable or is simply too vague. Very often, attempts to address F.C.R end at the first levels of management or the project becomes unmanageable.

The Customer Service Representative’s point of view:
Having been on-the-phone for 3 years serving customers around Europe and progressing throughout the ranks of call centers during the last 14 years, I have had time to lead my own investigations and collect my own findings on the subject. The mission, which every C.S.R accepts, is to qualify and to resolve the customer query at the very first call, there is no mistake about that. The inability to do so is due, in my experience, to policies and processes and is the driver for low F.C.R rates as well as high employee turnover and burnout.

The policies and processes in question are not quickly or easily modifiable; they are corporate policies and cross functional processes. I can vividly recall several instances where I was unable to resolve the issue even with 5 calls!

Trying to convince the customer that although he had purchased his product 6 months ago, it was unfortunately, according to the date of manufacturing, out of warranty because it had sat on a dealer’s shelf for 6 months in a different country of origin.

Attempting to refer the customer to a different vendor as a result of his system no longer functioning with our device made no sense but support boundaries dictated that only the hardware had to be troubleshot.

Trying to answer intelligently the customer questions when the new product or service had hit the streets before you were even trained on it! These are only a few examples and as a C.S.R, you pass on this information to the next level.

The point of view of the Support Engineer:
The quest of this next level job was precisely to gather C.S.R and customer feedback and improve the resolution rate. To do so, support engineers were provided with contacts into different parts of the organization to find the appropriate owner. My initial analysis showed me that on average 67% of total calls were closed at first contact and that the remaining 33% were split between 2-time callers (10%), 3-time callers (20%) and abandoned cases (3%).

This meant that if a customer query was not closed during the first call, it was a case of Third Call Resolution the majority of times. By investigating and classifying the reasons behind the open calls, I was rapidly able to address some training and knowledge gaps and system performance. But the greater parts of the problems were linked to dozens of processes and policies which became isolated topics in the realm of things.

The increasing speed of New Production or Service Introductions meant that testing and customer feedback phases were shortened and products were launched with unwanted or unknown features. Replication of customer problems was only done in rare and severe cases as resources were working on future product releases instead. Products were falling short of customer expectations but sold otherwise. Unit and spare-part stock allocation was done in favor of the sales channel and not available for support.

With the number of complaints typically being lower than .5% of the total volume in any one given area, it was hard to gain attention to develop solutions for customers. Yet behind every open case the customer was still waiting to be served.
Creating awareness of the above, gave me the opportunity to move into a management position.

The Total Customer Experience Manager’s point of view:
From my findings so far, moving further away from the customer meant, strangely enough, that I could come closer to helping him. By this time, I was determined to address all the customer queries and went about my role very literally. Total customer Experience meant walking the customer path and removing all the road blocks. In other words, I was certain to find answers in customer life-cycle management.

Every organization involved in the system was performing on target or close to target according to its performance measures. And during my interview rounds, I was frequently confronted with the feedback that the Call Centers were not handling the calls properly, that call centers were jeopardizing the company’s reputation and results. That was the source of the problem, I was told.

Knowing better, I investigated into each organizations’ reason for being. My starting point, the sales organization, was selling complete untested solutions as opposed to products or services. This alone did not match how the call center was organized, trained or staffed. Services were sold that did not exist according to the sales brochure and it quickly became apparent that local country organizations were developing their own sales strategies without informing the rest of the company. It was good for the numbers so no case there. The Sales Representative had no idea of the after sales customer experience and neither was it of interest since performance did not measure customer satisfaction.

Once the customer was in possession of his purchase, the post-sales process started. As the C.S.R’s were dealing with product bundles non-conforming to the catalog, the out-of-the-box experience became everything but user-friendly.

Everyone impacts F.C.R
Having moved on since and having observed identical scenarios across industries, I am a firm believer that F.C.R does not start with the Customer Service Representative, it ends with the C.S.R. The starting point is with the Sales Representatives. The lack of visibility, understanding and knowledge between these 2 functions can be devastating to the customer. Having trained both communities in one single training class and monitored progress, it has been an eye opener and worthwhile exercise.

The next fundamental element in successful F.C.R is measuring. What is not measured does not get done, as we all know. If all the contributors to the system impact F.C.R, why are only the C.S.R’s and call center organizations measured on it? Implementing F.C.R and customer satisfaction individual performance targets in operations such as supply chain, on-site installation and order processing has also brought the right level of focus on customer queries and given amazing results. Bottom line, we all need to take care of First Call Resolution.

Nathalie FRECHET is the founder of Passion 4 Customer, a company dedicated to European complaint management and customer intelligence. Passion 4 Customer manages customer feedback across 8 European countries, 7 industries in 4 languages. Visit us at http://www.passion4customers.com