\r\n In my last column decrying \u201cAverage Thinking\u201d I touched on the importance of measuring first contact resolution (FCR) across the entire customer\r\n population, not just on the average FCR metric. Customers keep telling us that FCR is essential for them to keep doing business with your company, often\r\n rating it in the 80% range as the #1 priority.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n Let\u2019s use the expression \u201cfailure rate\u201d to describe when you are not resolving an issue the first time, defined as follows: If you are hitting 70% FCR in\r\n your contact center, this means that you are not resolving issues 30% of the time, so there is a 30% failure rate \u2013 clearly a disturbingly high number!\r\n There are a number of root causes for not meeting FCR and suffering high failure rates including:\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n But there is another root cause that you might need to address, namely broken systems or processes that plague the entire customer service operation, e.g.\r\n billing system errors or data entry mistakes that don\u2019t capture a customer\u2019s reissued credit cards. While it is very important to resolve these issues when\r\n customers complain, isn\u2019t it far better to make sure that the issue never had to happen in the first place? Getting it right the first time will lead to\r\n what I have always called ZCR = Zero Contact Resolution. ZCR is the premise of our 1st<\/sup> book (The Best Service is No Service1<\/sup><\/em>\r\n ) and is followed by many of the Me2B Leaders that we profile in our 2nd<\/sup> book (Your Customer Rules!<\/em>2<\/sup>) in two of the 39 Me2B\r\n \u201cCustomer Sub-Needs\u201d that we profile:\r\n \r\n A recent kerfuffle close to my home outside of Seattle seems to fit this ZCR challenge, and also hits more of the Me2B Customer Need \u201cYou make it easy for\r\n me\u201d: In the short article \u201cOver 3,300 I-405 toll-lane drivers overcharged\u201d3<\/sup>, soon after this new toll was imposed on the Interstate highway the\r\n system\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n OK, stuff like this happens and so what would you expect the State of Washington\u2019s Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to do? Email, call, or text these\r\n 3,300 known customers to advise them of the double-billing, and tell them that it was fixed? Alas, the article concludes with this:\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\n Clearly not ZCR thinking! Inviting \u201canyone\u201d to call the center with questions is also fraught with more failures and inabilities to hit FCR targets, as\r\n well as overall service level KPIs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\n Getting it right the first time might not be easy, but it\u2019s far better and cheaper than awaiting customer complaints or inquiries and trying to fix them on\r\n the fly, especially given the root causes of \u201cfailure rates\u201d, of not achieving high levels of FCR.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n 1. The Best Service is No Service: Liberating Your Customers From Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs <\/em>\r\n (Wiley 2008)\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n2. Here are the 7 Customer Needs that Lead to a Winning \u201cMe2B\u201dCulture:\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\n3. \u201cOver 3,300 I-405 toll-lane drivers overcharged\u201d, Seattle Times <\/em>October 15, 2015, page B10.\r\n<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my last column decrying \u201cAverage Thinking\u201d I touched on the importance of measuring first contact resolution (FCR) across the entire customer population, not just on the average FCR metric. Customers keep telling us that FCR is essential for them to keep doing business with your company, often rating it in the 80% range as […]","protected":false},"author":6438,"featured_media":93520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82,328,88,14,94,87],"tags":[359],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6438"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\r\n
\r\n \u201cSent an incorrect message that certain passes and license plates could not be read\u201d, so that \u201ca customer service representative then billed those vehicles\r\n not knowing they had already been billed.\u201d\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\n \u201cAnyone who sees suspicious charges on their bills is asked to call WSDOT for a refund.\u201d\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
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