Call center worker has own tale of woe

This is my 20th year in customer service, and although it's been a few years since I have been on the front-line taking calls, I can still connect with the story of this call center worker and his frustrations at trying to deliver customer service, while working in a tightly controlled "numbers environment".


For those who haven't worked in a call center, it's got to be the most measured environment you can possibly be in - everything from toilet breaks to pauses in your speech, how long you talk to your attendance (down to the second).


For those who have or do work in call centers, I need not say more, and i'd love to hear your comments first hand!


This "numbers environment" structure comes from an outdated model that stretches back to the late 19th century when the first electromechanical automatic telephone exchange was invented by Almon Strowger, and the first switchboard operators began appearing. In the early 1900's, as these exchanges began to handle more and more calls, engineers began struggling to develop ways of efficiently handling the growing traffic through the use of statistically predictive models - most notably starting with the "Erlang", which was developed by A.K Erlang.

The Erlang began as a way of calculating how many lines you would need to handle a certain number of calls lasting a certain amount of time, but soon spread to calculating how many people you'd need too. Thus began the micro-measurement of the call center environment.


What was overlooked in this clinical approach to "handling calls" was of course "handling customers". Customers themselves are such a highly unpredictable variable in your calculation, that it's the bane of any call center manager or workforce planner. What if you're customer is hard of hearing? Or doesn't have just one question but ten? Or your computer is running slow because of a Windows update? Although their is room for some variation in the calculation, overall the method tends to ignore these as "anomalies" that can be dealt with  by someone else (namely the person taking the call!).


In an industry where the focus now is to go beyond handling calls, or even just delivering customer satisfaction, and into the realm of delighting customers and turning them into cult followers of brands, one has to ask what new approaches are being taken now to move away from this old antiquated model and look for a new way of embracing technology and people in such as a way that all parties win.


Attrition is the killer of call centers, not just in terms of cost for acquisition and training, but in terms of interruption to service, transition of account management, team morale, and the hurtful fact that knowledge is walking out your door.


If the industry cannot adopt a new attitude and implement enablers for staff to deliver the level of service we all know we want, then we're sadly heading towards a zero sum game.


Don't get me wrong, this isn't a simple weekend project. There are many factors to weigh up, many angles to consider, but the key is businesses have to begin thinking and implementing now, to ensure alignment with their people on the ground and the organization goal of delighting customers.


I encourage you to read the story and let me know you're thoughts!