Customers blame the company not the call centre agent for poor service 

Call centre agents too often hampered by technology and not helped by company-wide problems and inefficiencies that could have been avoided in the first place according to a new survey 

Despite the horror stories that are routinely swapped at dinner parties, and the bad press often surrounding call centres, the relationship between the consumer and customer service agents is perhaps not as bad as people think.   

More than a third (38%) of UK consumers questioned in a survey believe that agents are actually trying to be helpful, but seem to struggle with company policies, processes or technology. Indeed, the survey also revealed that 1 in 5 respondents had recently been impressed with the efforts made by a customer service agent to help deal with a problem. 

The survey of more than 2000 adults was commissioned by Jacada, a leading provider of customer experience management and process optimisation solutions for customer service operations, and conducted by YouGov.   What the Survey made clear was that businesses’ constant need to implement new technologies to streamline processes and to reduce costs is actually contributing to the problems in the company’s call centre, as this very technology can often hamper an agent's ability to offer a high quality interaction with their customers. Especially as most of the new technology and changes to business processes have been designed (or evolved over time) with the company’s needs in mind, not the customer’s.  

“I think that agents on the whole really are doing a good job, I’ve sat with agents at some of our customers and was amazed by how skilled they are – expert multitaskers, personable (often in extreme circumstances) and keen to help, adds Guy Tweedale. “What makes it even more impressive is not only are they struggling with cumbersome technology and processes, under severe pressure to complete calls quickly and improve metrics, but also the fact that according to our survey 1 in 4 customers admit to losing their temper during their contact with customer services!” 

In order to deliver the highest quality customer interaction, agents need to have an ‘intelligent view’ of the customer, which includes important information such as his/her specific needs, as well as up-to-date information about available products and services – all of which need to be appropriate to the call type and the call flow.  As a result, technology can sometimes actually hamper the CSRs' ability to offer such a high quality interaction with their customers, since CSRs are often faced with a chaotic maze of complex applications and tools installed on their desktop.  In fact, anecdotal evidence points to many CSRs having between 20 and 30 open applications on the desktop at any one time, which means that the attention on the customer and their issue is greatly reduced. 

The survey also revealed that, despite the latest focus on self-service technology, most people (67%) still prefer to speak to a real person if they have an urgent or serious problem. As often the only touch point with customers, it’s critical that companies invest in their phone-based customer service facilities, to ensure they meets customers’ expectations, consistently.