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FCR is an industry acronym that means First Call Resolution. This
means that when a customer has a problem, it takes one phone call
to
get it fixed. I am well and truly convinced that the vast majority of
customers who leave a company that uses call centers to interface
with the customers do
so because they do not get FCR when they
have
a problem. They're lucky if they get TCR (Tenth Call Resolution). And
the reason for this in an overwhelming majority of cases is that
damned middleman called Customer Care.
Customer Care is an essentially worthless department. CC agents
are
given very basic training to handle a wide variety of issues, and are
expected by their employers to make every effort to deflect a call
from
being transferred to the appropriate department. They are expected
to
resolve billing issues, provide limited technical support, handle
customer complaints, make changes to accounts, and many other
tasks.
Well the fact is, they fucking suck at it, and most of them don't care
enough to even perform what limited tasks they have been trained
to
do. The majority of the time, they ignore even their basic
troubleshooting steps and transfer the customer straight to another
department. The rest of the time, they try to resolve simple issues
and
fuck it up, resulting in a grand waste of time and money from the
customer having to call back, get transferred to the right
department,
after 3 or 4 incorrect transfers, and have credits issued to
compensate
the now irate customer.
In short, I guess my point is this: Customer Care is a great idea... in
theory. It's supposed to provide satisfaction and quick resolution for
all the minor issues that come in, while saving the (slightly) higher-
paid specialist departments from handling the bulk of the calls, thus
requiring fewer of them that have to be paid the (again, slightly)
higher
wages.
Given that there are no issues that cannot, and usually are not
handled anyway, by specialty departments such as tech support,
receivables
management, and sales, I propose that more customers, and their
revenue, would be retained and be more satisfied, thus spreading
word and attracting more customers, by simply throwing in the
towel
and shelling out the (slightly) extra pay to get rid of the Customer
Care
department entirely and training more specialists. We end up taking
the calls and handling the issues anyway, after the customers are fed
up and ready to leave, so why not just cut out the bullshit?
Customers
would be happier, we'd get and retain more of them, and would
actually pay less money by getting rid of a non-productive
department.
[link]
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I've found most CC departments prefer leading their victims on a lengthy wild-goose chase, the "FCR" of which is getting you to scream as loudly as possible in frustration then hang up or call them fucking idiots so they have an excuse to hang up themselves...which is why I try to deal locally. Telling a cc-noob "hey, I can be there in ten minutes we can talk about it in person" while hinting not-too-vaguely that you're gonna show up with a big smile and an even bigger baseball bat, works quite well. |
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//by simply throwing in the towel and shelling out the (slightly) extra pay to get rid of the Customer Care department entirely and training more specialists// |
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Eggbert said that just the other day - you just can't get the staff these days. Both are probably a call for a recruitment/training agency. |
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While I fully admit that there's a decidedly ranty tune to it, I
think my idea is one that makes good business sense, in a truly
win-win fashion. The whole point of those CC goons is to make
the company look good by having a department dedicated to
CARING! Yay! My ass, I say! Nobody buys it. It doesn't make the
customers feel good. The whole concept of a CC department is
an industry tradition that has seen it's glory days come and go.
The first company that got rid of it would see wildly increased
profits. They're just so scared to break the tradition of having the
CC department everyone is used to dealing with. Well the fact is,
nobody actually likes CC. Nobody feels cared about by CC. So get
rid of it and expand the departments that actually WOW the
customer and produce quantifiable results. |
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In short, my idea is for a whole new organizational structure and
method of interfacing with the customers in a meaningful,
productive way that customers will appeciate and come to expect
in other companies that they do business with. |
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I'm sure if the premise is true, that companies would be doing it. And I would expect that some probably are. |
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