Nuance Enterprise Connect Blog - All Comments

re: True Stories of “WOW”: Customer Experience @ Zappos.com

Mathew Sanders — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:25:15 GMT

And I bet the staff really enjoy working there as well! Good on ya Zappos!

re: How Do I Reduce Average Handle Time (AHT)? And, Who Is John Galt?

Jessica — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:42:25 GMT

I disagree as I feel that they are tied together in some respects. If you have a caller 'stuck' on a call with you for 30 minutes and you still haven't solved my issue, I would not be a satisfied customer, even though call time is not a metric in this scenerio.

Speech Self-Service: Which Tasks Do I Do First? (Part 2)

Insight from the Customer Experience Experts — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:55:06 GMT

In my last post I talked about two important rules of thumb that we use to identify transactions that

Speech Self Service – Which Tasks Do I Do First? (Part 2)

Insight from the Customer Experience Experts — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:32:08 GMT

In my last post I talked about two important rules of thumb that we use to identify transactions that

re: How Do I Reduce Average Handle Time (AHT)? And, Who Is John Galt?

Kinnet Lindley — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:43:25 GMT

You asked the question:

"What is more important -- lower handle time, improved customer experience or driving revenue opportunity?"

The answer to that question -- in relationship to RPC, FCR and agent quality is relative and depends on whom you ask.

Here is an excerpt covering the agent's position on this subject from the hilarious new call center fiction novel, HANDLE TiME by LiNCOLN PARK:

"While the customer thinks they are the most important aspect of a call center's life; it is the metrics which actually reigns supreme.

The measurement of Quality of service to customers only serves as a way to block payout of commission-based incentives. Centers rely on Sales, Average Handle Time (AHT), Quality and Schedule Adherence to justify everything from the purchase of toilet paper to their reason for continued existence.

In call centers, to take time and help your customer will absolutely RUIN your Average Handle Time. Ruining your handle time means that you are ruining your quality; thus, ruining your agent variable pay; finally, ruining your paycheck.

In other words:

TO HELP YOUR CUSTOMER

IS TO

completely and

unequivocally,

RUIN YOUR PAYCHECK.

I'm serious! The idea is to stay on the call for the shortest amount of time that you can; in order for you to take as many calls as you can. The customer's satisfaction with your service is incidental. And so – every call center worker must ponder the following questions and make a choice each time they logon to their systems:

Do I help the customer?

-- or --

Do I pay rent?"

re: Our Newly Acquired Customers Have Alphanumeric Account Numbers, But Our IVR Only Supports Numeric. What Should We Do?

Bernhard Suhm — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:33:52 GMT

All things considered, assigning new numeric account numbers is likely to lead to higher self-service success. Recognizing alphanumeric strings is notoriously difficult, and accuracy is significantly lower than for digit strings. Worse yet, there is no easy fallback to DTMF entry - which is the only way to recover from repeated recognition errors.

Or, better yet, use a number that everybody knows by heart (like their phone number) to identify callers. One of the biggest hurdles in identifying callers (and consequently, self-service) is challenging callers to provide information that they don't have at their fingertips.