Once upon a time suppliers cared about their customers and customers knew they did. As the pressures of business changed, so did this relationship. Companies forgot about customers and focused on making sales. Eventually, the customers rebelled and moved in their masses to those suppliers who at least pretended to care for them. Soon thereafter, everyone started to pretend.
Then some bright spark realized that setting up a call center was the answer to all their prayers. It gave dissatisfied customers a place to vent, and salespeople didn’t have to face them.
Because it cost so much to staff these centers with indigenous employees, companies began outsourcing this function. In the 1980s, India had already made it a national priority to become a leader in the computer age. Less than two generations later, they emerged as the country of choice for Western call centers.
The Customer Service arena is still changing. Whether by design or default, the Web has allowed companies to care less about their customers once again, even though outsourcing costs are beginning to rise.
My guess is that Indian call centers price themselves largely on the volume of customers they expect to serve. I know it’s where I’d start. If you knew you’re going to process 2400 calls per day, then that would be 100 per hour. If you estimated that each call would average about four minutes, then you could work out that there would be 25 units of calls that you had to handle during that time. You’d then have to think about how many of these calls would occur simultaneously. There’s probably an industry average for that. You’d have to allow for breaks, illness, holidays and vacations. You’d also have to have a telephone system that could handle the calls. All these things would help you determine how much you needed to spend on buildings, equipment, and staff in a given year.
A new phenomenon has crept into all this. Those companies that really want to connect with their customers and potential customers have made it easier for them to connect than those who don’t. For example, the truly savvy – those who just want to connect, only ask for your name and email address. A few ask you for a little more information in the first instance, and then have you log-in each time. But, those who really don’t want to hear from you at all ask for everything they can think of every time.
I had this experience the other day with Hewlett-Packard’s chat “service.” It took me at least 20 minutes (I’m not kidding) to find everything they wanted to know before I could get to the online chat window. They wanted to know the make, model name, and model number of the computer. Guess where the model number is on a laptop. On the bottom, and you have to read it upside down. This means disconnecting everything and laying it on its side, like a two-sided triangle, and then writing down the information. The model name is printed on the front of the computer; what’s so hard about putting the model number there as well? Mine has a little badge for the processor, operating system and LightScribe. I don’t need a label to tell me those things. No, the vital stuff is in almost in the worst possible place. (The most inconvenient spot would be inside the machine, in the bay, under the hard drive. Then you’d have to turn everything off, disassemble it, write down the number, put it back together, and then go through the entire sign-in process again. Maybe I shouldn’t give them any ideas!)
HP asked for my operating system, too. (What does it matter until you know what the question is?) And they also wanted to know if I considered myself to be a beginning, intermediate or advanced user. I thought I had intermediate skills, but after chasing all over the place, I began to feel like the hole in the doughnut.
I’ve saved the best for last. What’s your browser of choice? Mine is Firefox, but it’s been crashing a lot lately, so I’ve switched to Chrome. After gathering all the info they asked me for, then they told me that I couldn’t access the online chat facility in the browser I was using. It doesn’t support Firefox either. Of course, it supports Internet Explorer – no surprises there – but, it also supports Netscape, a browser used by less than two percent of the entire surfing population. Talk about being obtuse.
Most people would have given up by now, and I’m pretty sure that that’s their goal, too. A few, like me, would actually complain to the person in the call center. But, guess what? He/she doesn’t work for HP. Instead, he/she works for a different company that’s contracted to HP. He/she can tell his/her boss, but then what do you think will happen? Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.
I had one question. The answer was a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I just wanted to know if I could plug more than one external display into my laptop. That was it. The answer was as I suspected: No, I can’t. There’s an opportunity there for someone.
