It is often said that managing a call center is more of an art than a science. Some customer service managers use standard operational metrics to manage their business to – like average hold times (AHT), first contact closure rate (FCR) agent, agent productivity numbers, escalation rates, etc. Others apply established customer service best practices to their organizations without understanding the intent behind these best practices. Yet other companies adopt the current trends without an analysis of their strategic importance.
Here is my list of “half truths and total nonsense” about management philosophies and technologies in customer service. Which ones resonate with you? Which ones do you believe are not myths and work for you?
Kate’s List of Common Services and Support Myths
- Social customer service myths
- Social CRM is giving customers control
- Twitter works for customer service
- I don’t need to interface my social processes with my traditional customer service processes
- If I have a forum, I don’t need a knowledgebase
- Multichannel customer service myths
- Established best practice apply to my call center
- I am special – Established best practices do not apply to my call center
- Front-line support agents don’t know anything
- When you measure operational activities, you measure business outcomes
- Support can act independently of brand –Support can have a different brand identity than the rest of the company
- Email doesn’t work as a support medium
- Chat won’t work for tech support
- I dont need proactive chat
- Knowledge management for customer service myths
- Longer calls are not good web self-service candidates
- Customers can’t create reliable knowledge
- Better search means that I can find everything
- We don’t need to segment based on customer type of persona
What is your favorite myth about customer service?
