This article explains why bad customer service in customer call centers exists by breaking it down into 2 main reasons:
Reason 1) Managers want to see increased productivity per agent. This means that if an agent can handle 50 calls a day, then the manager will coach this agent into taking more than 50 calls (55 calls for example). This increased productivity of 10% is a great sign for the managers because they don’t have to hire more call operators, therefore they can reduce costs. This results in each agent having an increased work load, which equates to pressure and less time per call.
Reason 2) Agents will be managed on their average call time therefore, they have a set time frame per each caller. If they talk to the caller longer than a certain amount, the managers will see this as unproductive and may provide coaching to the agent. This results in agents trying to solve problems that the caller has in sometimes an unrealistic time frame, which leads to poor quality of service.
This article was interesting because I had background information about this topic from class 19, People, Culture and Teams from Comm 101 and therefore I could make connections between the two materials. From comm 101, I can now understand why Zappos emphasizes so heavily on the fact that they have no restrictions on time for their customer service calls. Due to the fact that the agents in Zappos are encouraged to provide lengthy and detailed help for the callers from the management team of the organization – which do not follow the two main reasons of poor customer service above- explains why their customer service is exceptional. This article was interesting because of the quantitative analysis behind poor customer service along with the fact that I could make distinctions between why good and poor customer service arise.