Complaints handling: The importance of staff selection in call centres

The tragedy of the death of 17-year-old schoolboy David Iredale, who died of thirst after becoming lost in the Blue Mountains on a bushwalk, hit home to me the importance of culture and staff selection in call centres. It seems that the failure of triple-0 to respond in any useful or compassionate way to his calls of distress was a major factor in his death.

The Ambulance call centre manager told an inquest into David’s death that apathetic, uncaring, dismissive attitudes were prevalent in the Redfern emergency call centre at the time, and this had been like a "disease" in the organisation.

For me the incident raises two important questions about call centres: what sort of selection process do call centres have to hire people with a helpful and caring attitude and what do call centre do to foster a caring and helpful culture?

These two questions are critical in the area of any call centre because, firstly, if complaints made by phone are not handled properly they can escalate and, secondly, a mere inquiry could morph into a complaint. An organisation’s reputation can rest on how well calls are handled and, in a competitive environment; it could mean the difference between winning over and maintaining customers.

Selection Process

As the above tragic incident starkly shows there is a need to have a selection process to hire staff who are empathetic. Some of the things worth thinking about when hiring staff include employing those with:

• Good interpersonal skills including the ability to empathize with complainants.


• Enthusiasm for, and commitment to, an efficient, effective and fair complaints–handling system.


• Good communication skills, including being a good listener.


• A thorough knowledge or the capacity to quickly acquire knowledge of the organization’s products and structure, and a sense of pride and commitment to the company’s mission and values.


• An ability to assess objectively all relevant factors about the inquiries/complaints from the view of the customer/complainant and the company.


• The ability to handle stress in a calm and polite manner, and to be able to diffuse a customer’s anger.


• A positive outlook on life.

Besides selecting the right people they need to have the right skills. Consider the following, for example:

• Greeting Skills: Offers to help during the call ( A simple “How can I help you?”)


• Does the operator sound interested in what the caller has to say and empathetic to the caller’s needs?


• Does the operator engage the caller?


• Is the operator a good listener?


• Was the operator able to deal with the issue or give a reasonable response?

Culture

Talk to anyone about the thing they dislike most about call centres and the major response will be long connection times or failure to connect quickly to a “talking head”.

Many of the problems consumers have with call centres come about from what I call an “inside-out “approach by the organisation and not an “outside-in” approach. By that I mean that some organisations organise their call centre around their needs and not those of their customers. With a bit of lateral thinking they could meet both their needs and those of their customers.

One wonders how much analysis is done of calls to call centres to determine the information needs of customers and see how much this in turn could result in information being placed on the website and such information being visible, accessible and easy to follow. The term accessible in this context covers ‘find-ability’. 'Accessible' has another implication, one of inviting people in, being welcoming, open, and approachable. It’s all about engagement. So if customers have an attractive and responsive alternative there will be less need to ring call centres and perhaps shorter connection times.

Long connection times seem to suggest to me:

• an understaffed centre


• an understaffed centre during peak periods


• longer times to deal with customers because of the nature of the goods and services on offer


• combination of some or all of the above.

While these matters could be dealt with by better management and resources one should never underestimate employing experienced people who have an excellent knowledge of the organisation, and its product and services as a quick and efficient way of dealing with customers.

Another aspect about culture is what I call “tone at the top”. Operators take their cue from the leadership of the company. If the organisation is not caring or putting a value on empathetic dealing with calls this will be reflected in the way operators deal with customers.