Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 2010, Saturday

Ottawa Citizen

August 28, 2010, Saturday

Ottawa Citizen

Call centres, unscripted

A growing number of companies' clients are happier and personnel more productive when they throw away the prepared text, writes

It isn't the "Press 1, Press 2," or the "This call may be recorded," or even the "Please wait ..." No, the most frustrating part of calling a call centre can be the realization that even when you do connect, you don't.

Sometimes, it's a language wall. The other person's English -- in pronunciation, inflection, idiom -- isn't your English.

But as often, it's the rote, unsatisfying responses, the clock you almost hear ticking. Getting rid of you is important to them.

"A lot of the criticism that call centres get is that the staff are quite robotic and they don't listen," acknowledges Andrew Carlton of American Express Canada.

AmEx and a handful of other companies say they ARE listening. They're taking call-centre reps off-script and off the clock, giving them scope to solve callers' concerns. The result, they say, is happier customers and, equally important to the bottom line, happier, more productive employees.

But why would such a business no-brainer take so long? One reason: that shocker of a recession.

The call-centre industry sprang up in the 1990s, fostered more by the arrival of automated phone systems and cheap long-distance rates than a desire of companies to insulate themselves from customers, especially complaining customers.

But global competition brought standardization and penny-pinching, leading to the practices consumers learned to loathe. Prospective employees, meantime -- or "galley slaves" in the words of U.S. consultant and author Niels Kjellerup -- came to view the centres as a last-ditch job source where every action would be prescribed and there was little break from monotony.

By 2007, annual staff turnover rates in the U.S. were topping 25 per cent, a global study reported. In certain sectors, odds were a new hire wouldn't last the year.

Some operators had begun to adopt strategies to improve the quality of service, but "cost pressures" were discouraging others from making changes, the study found.

Yet as lead author Rosemary Batt, a professor at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, noted: "There is growing evidence that centres that invest in the skills of the workforce and provide discretion to solve customer problems have lower turnover, better service quality and higher revenues." Few firms were willing to risk such investments in the financial meltdown that started soon after, especially when rising unemployment helped ease the turnover problem.

Among those that did were American Express, Internet shoe retailer Zappos and computer manufacturer Dell Inc. (which once had call-centre operations in Ottawa). For AmEx, the strategy meant replacing calls-per-day targets and employee behaviour checklists -- repeating the customer's name three times during a call, for instance -- with a do-what-it-takes mandate to keep clients happy.

Agents get more training, bonuses tied to customer satisfaction reports, and business cards bearing the new title of "customer care professional." New job categories allow advancement, while under-performers receive coaching and and are encouraged to reach incremental goals.

Nura Muhammed, a two-year staffer at an AmEx call centre in Toronto that serves Canada and the U.S., says the increased freedom lets her spend time walking a customer through an online registration for paperless statements. That pays off because it can cut costs in the longer term.

More complicated questions could come from commercial card holders.

"Some things can't be scripted, and if it is scripted, then it will probably be difficult to handle the situation," says Muhammed, one of 700 agents at the centre (another 200 work at a contract centre near Kitchener).

"Once the script ends, you can't really think outside that box." She says customers are happier, which spreads to the staff. "It lightens up the mood," she reports. "Now that we're resolving the issues firsthand, it feels like everything's lifted off our shoulders." Andrew Carlton, general manager and vice-president, world service at American Express Canada, says even as the economy improves, turnover at the Toronto centre remains below 10 per cent -- an industry low, and one indication the program is working. Another is a steady rise in customer satisfaction scores.

Toronto-based retail consultant Richard Talbot says AmEx, known for its annual membership fees, needed to prove to customers it offers better service so it could compete with an influx of cheaper cards.

Adds Talbot: "I suspect that in a limited way, the service is catching up to what people probably already expect from American Express when they sign up." Rosemary Batt, author of the 2007 call centre study, notices that some companies that sent customer service to offshore contractors are reopening centres in Canada and the U.S., at least for more complicated transactions. Largely, however, the industry appears still to be following the cost-driven model that consumers detest.

She applauds firms that are embracing the attitude shift and initial financial outlay, in training and compensation, necessary to improve customer service.

"This is good business," she says. "It's good business for consumers, it's good business for companies."

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