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November 2000 Volume 2.03
Answering the Phone - Part Two
by Rodger Gallagher
 Customers
are happy to wait differing times depending on the nature of their
call
Our earlier article examined how the time customers wait when phoning
a call centre impacts on the customer excellence rating. Although
answering time is an important component of the service delivered
by call centres it is usually not the most important factor. But
in some situations it can be quite important.
What we have found is that there is a relationship between the
nature of the query, the associated time taken to the resolve the
query and the time taken to answer the call. As the time taken to
resolve a query and the complexity of the query decreases, the time
that customers are prepared to wait for their calls to be answered
also decreases. This is fairly intuitive - people get upset when
they have to wait for 20 seconds to make a very short transaction
such as checking the balance of their bank account, but they are
happy to wait a few minutes for a computer support session that
might take 30 minutes to resolve a problem. So there is no universal
standard that can be applied to all call centre situations. The
standard must be set on both the complexity of the call and the
length of the call.
Customer needs when calling
If we look at the call length it is important to start the clock
from the customer's perspective. When did the problem or need become
significant enough for the customer to make the call, and what did
they do then? (Customer Need) Where did they get the phone number
to call? Was it from a directory service or from a label stuck to
their computer monitor? And then the customer waits in the queue
while their call is answered. (Waiting) Next the customer must explain
the problem or request (Explaining), with it then either being resolved
during the rest of the call or being handed over to another department
to look into. (Resolving) Each of these process steps has a cycle
time associated with it, and each needs to be considered when setting
time based service standards.
And to set service standards we need to know the average and maximum
time that each process step takes from the customers point of view.
In situations where the customer's call is about a complex matter
then the duration of the Resolving step expands in direct relation
to the complexity.
The following graph demonstrates this relationship. Where a customer
phones for a specific piece of information such as a pin number
or a phone number, or asking for a courier to call then this type
of interaction with a customer service representative has a low
level of complexity and usually takes less than 30 seconds to complete.
So where the total Explaining and Resolving time is less than 30
seconds then the Waiting time needs to much less than this to meet
customer needs. 15 seconds would be the maximum time that people
would be prepared to wait and still give a high rating for excellence.
Federal Express, the courier company, has a standard of answering
this type of call before or during the first ring - about 3 seconds
maximum.
Customer service interactions of Medium complexity include requests
to open a new bank account or getting electricity connected, as
well as significant changes to these services. These interactions
have a resolving time of 10 to 20 minutes. Bell Atlantic found that
for consumer phone service for these types of customer interactions,
the Waiting time for the call to be answered could be pushed out
to a few minutes before the overall ratings customers gave in surveys
declined markedly. This relationship only holds when a high standard
of service is provided. What customers wanted more than a quick
answering time, was that the reason for their call was resolved.
When a Windows NT computer suffers the blue screen of death, users
know that they have a complex problem to resolve. If they are a
small business with no onsite computer support then they will needs
lots of help and expect to send many hours rebuilding their software.
The Dell computer company receives calls of this complexity from
their customers and provides this support free of charge. Their
support technicians might take anything from half an hour to four
hours to walk the customer through the Resolving stage. And in this
type of situation customers are prepared to wait many minutes to
get through to a knowledgeable technician who will work with the
customer for a lengthy period.
So it is critical to set and keep phone call answer that are appropriate
to the customers' needs.
NOT VERY DIRTY
After the Auckland Philharmonia's Spanish Fiesta concert we had
decided that a cappuccino at a local Hamilton café would
be a good way to end the evening. We placed our order and after
the espresso magic of aromas and hisses, our cappuccinos arrived.
But Virginia's cup was dirty. The outside was badly stained from
many previous cups of coffee. On complaining to the waiter she was
told, "It's not very dirty." But he did replace the cappuccino.
The waiter's comment raises an interesting point. Perhaps this café
believes that a coffee cup that is clean over 80% of its surface
is clean enough? But would any customer be content with a cup cleaned
to this 80% standard? It seems unlikely, doesn't it. But businesses
often make similar assumptions when they set standards for service
delivery.
Call centres were featured recently in a computer industry weekly
newspaper. An IT support call centre manager interviewed for an
article was quoted as saying that, "Customers are demanding that
at least 80% of calls are answered within 20 seconds." Just think
about this service standard. There is no upper limit. 80% of the
calls could be answered in 20 seconds while the remaining 20% might
take 20 minutes to answer. While businesses might set a standard
like this I find it hard to believe that any customer would demand
service this bad. A far better and customer-focussed standard would
be to answer 100% of calls in 60 seconds.
So in the same way that customers want a 100% clean coffee cup,
service standards need to be set to match 100% of the customer need
of any given situation.
Regards,
Rodger Gallagher
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