Call centres, staffed by operatives who are not able to make decisions, rate considerably worse than call centres that can automate processes, according to polling from specialist software company, Inisoft.
The poll of 2,000 UK adults overturned the perception that automation is a bad thing for customer experience.
Top irritations for customers were:
1. Having to repeat your complaint to multiple people (58.40%)
2. Being placed on hold repeatedly during the call as staff checked policy (40.40%)
3. Feeling like the person you’re speaking to is reading from a script (32.00%)
4. Not feeling that the person you are speaking to has the authority to fix the problem (31.70%)
5. Feeling like the person you are speaking to is insincere (15.40%)
Oonagh McBride, Head of Inisoft said, “all of the major customer bugbears are the sorts of experiences typical in a call to a poorly equipped call centre. Ironically, call centres that lack proper automation tend to give customers the impression that they are talking to automatons. A poorly equipped call centre will have staff floundering to find the answer to increasingly complex enquiries from customers, leading to delays, inconsistency and frustration. When confronted with ill-prepared call centre staff, customers often express fury.”
The research also highlighted the importance of agent confidence when it comes to hearing customer problems and going off script if required. In fact, 75 per cent of those polled stated that receiving an apology was important. For those aged 35-54, over 30 per cent considered the apology to be ‘very important’. The study concluded that only 6 per cent of customers claim that their experience with contact centres is always good, or that there were no frustrations.
Oonagh added, “the more technology that call centre operatives have at their disposal, the more they are able to do what they do best, which is to communicate naturally with customers in the sure knowledge that they have all the resources they need.”
