Recently, I realized that an agreement I made with AT&T back in September wasn’t kept on their end. It all started when I decided to upgrade my phone from a Moto Q 9h Global (horrible phone by the way) and AT&T agreed to price match the Samsung Galaxy S from another site. However, they had to charge me the full amount and then provide me a refund in my monthly usage bill. Well, 4 months later, I remembered our arrangement and thought I would check out my payment history. No refund was to be found…
So, I called AT&T and spoke to one of their agents in order to get my refund as promised. The overall experience was as expected, however, one sentence really stuck out in the conversation that distinguished this call from the many other calls I’ve made to call centers. At the end of the discussion, the agent said “have we resolved this issue as to avoid additional call backs regarding this same problem?”. After I said “yes, it has been resolved”, she again asked if the issue and purpose of the call was resolved to my satisfaction. I again told her yes. A few moments later, I checked my AT&T wireless account on line, and the credit had been issued.
This call was different because the agent actually engaged in a dialog that outright addressed FCR. Part of me felt that the statement was a bit forthcoming, but in the end, we’re agreeing that I won’t be calling back about this problem. Knowing that she resolved it as expected, there should be no reason for me to call back, right? If I were to have answered “yes, I plan on calling back about this”, then we would have stayed on the phone until my problem was resolved.
So, why is this so important to recognize? Across the industry, FCR is one of many notable call center statistics for measuring agent performance and customer satisfaction. However, in a Frost & Sullivan paper, it’s noted that FCR is the “home run of call center statistics”. They go on to identify certain points that support the impact of high FCR rates:
- A 15% improvement in FCR results in a 57% reduction in repeat calls
- Increasing your FCR rates by 10% will lead to a 14% improvement in up sell ability
- 60% of all repeat calls are process or training driven
So, as AT&T is clearly looking to measure FCR and avoid callbacks, they decided to come right out and ask the question; ultimately asking me to agree that I won’t call back for this same issue. I would think that adding this one little sentence has decreased AT&T’s call backs significantly. What a novel idea…
