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Own, Decide, Do – Training to be rolled out to all Customer Service Advisors. When a complaint is received in the 150 call centres the individual must own the complaint, make a decision about what to do with it and follow any promised action up with a call to the customer to let them know what happened.
- Keeping the customer informed – With some complaints resolution may not be speedy. There may be some technical difficulties, which hold resolution up. The customer does not know this and will perceive any periods of silence as the indifference of BT to their complaint. Keeping the customer informed of progress or news (good or bad) will enhance the customers perception of BT>
- EDCSM’s (Event Driven Customer Service Measures), the service that BT offer customers must be analysed in order to measure its success. Through BT’s sophisticated SMART datatbase, every contact with the customer is logged with the id of the advisor who took the call. This way trends can be spotted as well as training areas
The barriers for the customer to successfully register their complaint are as follows:
- The BT ‘shunt’ – BT is a huge business with over 20 large call centres taking in the freephone 150 (customer service) calls. It is very easy for complaints to get ‘lost’ in the system.
- The call steering system. There are many different numbers to press for different departments. It is difficult to speak to a human
- The Call Handling Time that advisors are encouraged to adhere to. This measure the amount of time they are talkng with each customer in order to keep the Percentage of calls answered as high as possible.
- Poor training and coaching – target based coaching instead of skills based coaching
In the longer term there are some other changes that should be implemented by BT over a period of time in order to instil enhanced behaviours in all employees.
Traditionally employees of a company see a complaining customer as being a nuisance. BA challenged this when they introduced the Making Customers into Champions Model.
This model can be directly applied to BT, who is, itself, striving to provide World Class Customer Service.
This model labels different sectors of the customer base and how likely they are to contact BT with any dissatisfaction they may have and how easy it is to register this dissatisfaction. If the customer has a complaint and they cannot register this in any way, they may feel tempted to try a different provider. If the complaint is not registered then BT has not had a chance to resolve the complaint. If BT has a chance of resolving the issue, if it is resolved skilfully and well, research suggests that this could actually enhance the customer’s perception of BT. So, in short, a customer complaint can turn in to a glowing report for BT. Furthermore, if we make BT’s customers in to champions, BT can learn from the mistakes they have made that might have caused complaints in order that they do not occur again.
- A dissatisfied customer will tell between 10 and 20 other people about their problem
- A customer who has had a problem resolved will tell 5 people about their situation
The case of the complaining customer is a valuable study that BT should already have taken heed of. The problems experienced by Mr Shelton almost mirror the experiences some BT customers have when things go wrong and customer relations are tested to the full. It may be tempting for some employees working for such a huge ‘cash cow’ as BT to believe that BT can afford to lose difficult customers. This study shows that whilst few customers actually take the time and energy that Mr Shelton did to complain, there are actually many other dissatisfied customers (Mr Shelton is just the ‘tip of the Iceberg’). These customers are the ‘missing in action’ group and will just quietly take their custom elsewhere and thus impact significantly on BT’s profit margins. The article points out that whilst it would be easy for us to read Mr Shelton’s contacts with the company as neurotic, in actual fact Mr Shelton has responded very emotionally to the way he feels his complaint has been dealt with. Customers should be allowed to vent their feelings, feel listened to and valued before their problem is resolved. They are experiencing feelings of powerlessness and this will be compounded if they feel that an advisor is not listening to them. Paraphrasing can be a useful tool here, to show empathy and check for understanding.
TARP published a graphic representing the Tip of the Iceberg Principle. It indicates that consumer complaints to a third party are only a small portion of those that exist. They're just the visible portion and reflect the much broader picture. This demonstrates how important it is for BT to be proactive in gaining feedback from customers at every possible opportunity. It was not the tip of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, and it will not affect the business greatly if just those visible customers were dissatisfied with BT’s service. Those that leave quietly will have the greatest impact and BT will have little or no information as to why they left.
BT must strive to deal with any customer requests the first time every time. Here is a list of my recommendations for BT for implementing across the board over the next 12 months in order to retain customers.
- A review of the training process – all training should be underpinned with updated balance scorecard and appropriate coaching given by line managers
- Quality must come before quantity. If all customers were dealt with the first time they called, there would be less calls
- Approach customer complaints as a chance to ‘dazzle and delight’ customers and enhance a customers perception of BT – through a training programme
- Work together with different departments and not as adversaries. Promote teamwork
- Introduce an incentive scheme for teams and individuals who achieve excellent customer relations
- Use customer feedback more effectively (EDCSM’s)– find out what customers want/expect then exceed this
- Give staff more responsibility and authority to deal with complaints. Allow then to be flexible when it comes to procedural rules. Stop quoting ‘BT policy’.
- Allow a measure of redress such as goodwill payments and compensation payments
In implementing the above and re-training staff, BT will retain greater numbers of customers. Existing customers (especially those we have information about) are an ideal group to market new products to as well gain information from about how to improve on the products and services BT has.