Shifting Waste – service

We contacted John Seddon, and he told us that he would be pleased to participate in this discussion.

Here is some more food for thought. It’s an extract from John’s newsletter, and is reproduced with his permission:

Is your call centre a sweat shop?

Recently, on local and national radio, we have heard announcements about the opening of new call centres. Often the journalists ask: “Will this call centre be a sweat shop?” and the response is: “Oh no, we train our people properly and we look after them well”. And that is as far as the conversation goes.

If I were asking the questions, the next question would be: “Will you be measuring the workers on calls per man per day or call duration and that sort of thing?” If the answer is yes, this will be a sweat shop. These are the measures that define a production environment; they are at the heart of the philosophy that led to alienation and industrial strife for the whole of the last century. People who work in call centres know these measures are arbitrary, they have little to do with the work. To survive these people learn to ‘cheat’; often they prosper by ‘cheating’ to win prizes.

I have no doubt the manager would offer a defence. He (and it usually is the men who find these ideas hard to grasp) would say: “While we do use such measures we don’t use them in any harsh way”. I would suggest he go home, roll up a newspaper and raise it to his dog. Don’t hit the dog, the effect is the same.

Management’s preoccupation with call measures is due to their focus on their current view of the work – they think of all calls as units of work. This is a fundamental mistake. Regular readers of this column will know that in any call centre you find two kinds of calls, calls that I describe as ‘value demand’ – the things we are here to do for the customer and ‘failure demand’ – calls the customer has to make because the organisation has not done something or has not done something right for the customer.

In call centres you find failure demand can be anything from 25 to 75% of all calls. So if you wanted to improve the service offered by your call centre and reduce your own costs, would you focus your attention on the activity of your staff or the nature of calls coming in? Which way of behaving would be most likely to engage your staff in improving the work?

A bit obvious isn’t it?

John,

Here here! The secret is to design the work of agents against demand – something most call centre managers don’t know how to do as they take a top-down, not an outside-in view.

Yes this is all true. I agree with you Samatha. However there is still a case to be made for those companies that do have excellent products and services but yet the delivery of customer service is poor.

Two companies come to mind, I have worked for them both. So although there is much to be said about the product quality, and I agree here totally, what about the others whose products are the best in their field? Maybe the fault is in the ramp up process. Maybe its the need to hire so many people all at once and many, who perhaps are not Customer oriented, seem to make it through the testing and interviewing only to land on the other end of your 800 number.

To me theres still a distinct difference in representatives, those who truly care about what and how they do their job, and those who quite frankly seem less enthusiastic. Staff my center with the latter thank you. Maybe this is an HR problem. And maybe these stats, quality measures etc. are there to keep the ‘less enthusiastic’ CSRs in line but because we don’t really know whose who in large centers we rely on our stats and apply them to everyone carte blanche. Is this fair? Is it right? Can it be done better? I know how I would answer these questions.

Its hard and takes alot of work but it should be done.

Hello,

I just stumbled across this site by accident, but I’d like to join in. I don’t really know anything about the call center industry, but let me relate a short story to you:

I called a major car rental company recently. I was presumably connected to one of their call centers to handle my booking requirement. I wanted to rent a car overseas, and I had an idea of the type of car I wanted. The person I was speaking to me could tell me the exact availability and pricing in the city I was travelling to. I couldn’t remember my arrival time, but that was no problem. He took my flight number, and immediately knew what time I would pick up the car.

Then, things got a little difficult. I have a six month old son and a two year old daughter, and I needed car seats for them. But the booking person was not able to advise me on the availability of car seats. Worse, he didn’t know that different types of car seats were needed for each of my children, because of the difference in ages. Worse still, he couldn’t help me when I asked about the legal requirements in that country for child restraints.

His suggestion was that I discuss this with the representative when I arrived to pick up my car. I was expected to travel 4000 miles without even knowing if I would be able to drive away from the airport!

I finished the call with a bad impression of the company, but whose fault was it? I can’t blame the person I spoke to; he was very courteous and as helpful as he could be. So, it has to come down to one of two things. Either, the product he was selling (car rental) is not clearly defined within the company’s business. Or, that definition has not been communication to the staff taking the bookings.

I reckon it’s the second reason. But isn’t this all too common? If you phone a call center and you have a standard enquiry which follows their scripts nicely, then all goes well. If you ask anything non-standard, they’re lost. I don’t think it’s a problem with the people. It must be something to do with the way they are trained.

Herb, I’m an Account Manager with a Call Center in Minnesota who does outsource help desk capabilities along with inbound and outbound telemarketing services. If you would like to talk about opportunities for us to support you with your needs, please call me.

As a Center Manager, I centrainly agree that there is alot to be said for treating employees like SweatShop pawns.

However, there seems to be a point that was overlooked: Availability Ratings. I constantly measure how often any specific rep is Available to take a call, and if he/she is UNavailable, it’s important that I know why. It’s important because if there is a practive that takes them away from the phone…a practice that I can alter…then more customers can get served per hour.

Now, much of my staff rolls their eyes when I measure this sort of thing, and I DO understand that some activities that help a customer require stepping away from the phone to process paperwork or pull samples. But the Call Center as a Team needs to be available for every customer who calls in…and I think quantifying and measuring these standards is just good business.

Hello friends,

I am the founder & CEO of an IT project consultancy firm in India. We have recently diversified into setting up Call Center projects for our clients.

I fully agree with John that Call center should not (and cannot) be turned into a mass product unit. Every customer call is like an uncut diamond – handle it very carefully, you end up with a glittering diamond piece ; if you do not, you are left with just a piece of carbon !

GE Capital and British Airways are perhaps standing examples of how the call center business can be outsourced from India – without any compromise on the caliber of the Agent or the effectiveness of his/her handling the customers.

Outsourcing per-se is not wrong, provided only professionals who understand this business, be it India or China are at the helm of affairs. Training, retaining and orienting the agents the right way shall certainly add value to the Company and the client.

Which obviously means that the savings in costs or value addition can sure be a long term support solution.

I welcome readers’ views !

R. Viswanathan
PRESIDENT & CEO
PARAMOUNT FOUNDATION
BANGALORE, INDIA