Customer Service Buzz

Stop for a minute and ask yourself this – is “getting coached” a good thing in your organization? If you’re being honest, chances are it’s probably not.

Last week Pete and I spent an entire day running our latest workshop, teaching trainers to instill better coaching practices in their supervisor and team lead populations. We had 30 companies represented across nearly every major industry. It was a great crowd, with very energetic discussion.

The very first exercise of the day involved creating a goal for coaching. And while many participants jumped in an added their thoughts, two things were abundantly clear:

 1) Coaching is a misused word and concept. The outcomes, methods, and intent of coaching around the room couldn’t have been more diverse. Naturally, we assume when everyone nods their head in agreement at the word “coaching,” it’s universally understood. Well, you know what they say about assuming…

 2) Most organizations have not defined a true goal and purpose for coaching. We’re telling our leaders to “coach” without a sense of what that really means. Good coaching does not involve performance management, nor does it involve a conference room.

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If you’re like most of your peers, you’re on the lookout for fast and effective ways to cut expenditures in today’s cost-constrained environment. On the top of many executives’ lists – relaxing their average speed of answer (ASA) to cut back on staffing requirements. It’s an instant win for many contact center executives, but not one they exercise freely.

The prevailing belief is customers don’t want to wait on hold, so we’d better pick up the phone fast.  Companies spend significant resources to determine what ‘fast’ means to the customer, closely benchmarking their service levels with their peers. Changing their goal from 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds to 90% answered in 30 seconds becomes an agonizing decision without the right data.

So, what are customer breaking points?  Turns out there are greater tolerances for waiting time variance than often thought:

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• Customers preferences peak at 30 seconds, which seemingly indicates that they expect to wait that long, or possibly even that customers like to wait.
• Roughly between 30 and 50 seconds is when service levels impact the experience, though only marginally.
• Beyond 50 seconds the experience reaches a true impact point.

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