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QUIZ: Do you have what it takes to work in a call center?
Ever wondered the best time to call customer service so you don't have to wait on hold so long?
While reporting on a story for Marketplace, I put that question to Christine Kowalczyk, vice president at the Convergys Corporation, and she told me: Wednesday. Before lunchtime.
I figured she should know; her company answered one billion customer service calls last year. Convergys is a company that lots of other companies pay to handle their customer calls.
"But why Wednesday?" I asked.
"It's hump day," Kowalczyk explained. On Monday and Tuesday, people are still going through their weekend to-do lists, she noted. By Wednesday it quiets down on the call center floor. Especially just before lunchtime. (Afternoons are always busier as people start to get off work.)
The explanation made sense. But I'm wondering this: if I call customer service on a Wednesday mid-morning and I hear a recorded voice that says, "I'm sorry, call volume is higher than normal. Please call back at a later time..." ... can I sue for fraud?
Here's a list of tips of navigating a customer service call. Take our quiz below.
No amount of training someone to be empathetic can actually make the individual actually be empathetic unless they are already. This simply contributes to the illusory sense that a corporation would actually hire someone that cares about you. It's a job, and like most day-jobs, you're hired to do as your told. Corporations aren't in business to care about you. They care about staying ahead of their competition, profits, and satisfying their shareholders. The only thing customer service is there for is to prevent dealing with way too many potential lawsuit attempts... frivolous or otherwise.
Convergys is the best in the business, they can take a call from a consumer who "has an irregularity" (chemotherapy is very irregular, and we're just denying your claim for your own good)
It's some astonishing economics: Give a call center attendant an extra $30, and stick someone else with the $75,000 claim.
A good attorney knows that 5 minutes of empathy costs nothing, and does more than a year of adjournments and postponements - and keeps the responsibility for any malpractice in the least-risky place: On an hourly employee with no benefits who can be terminated instantly, and replaced with an extra 43 milliseconds of on-hold music.
I'm sorry. <i>(yes, we're going to repossess your house)</i>. You have had a very difficult week <i>(but nothing like next week when you get the bill from the surgeon who is listed in our network - but not for the sub-specialty you needed)</i>. I apologize for your long wait <i>(and can't wait until your lungs are too necrotic to bother us again!)</i>. It sounds like this has been very challenging for you. <i>(please, let's talk about how rough your illness has been. That doesn't cost us a dime).</i>
I'd much rather deal with some rude, abrasive guy who has the guts to say the truth:
<b>You've become a liabity. I took your money. What are you going to do about it?</b>
But, why deal with consumers as equals?
I listened to your story on customer call centers with interest—I teach in the Liberal Arts College at a large university where the administration is concerned with “recruitment and retentionâ€. Our college has both a high retention rate and strong positive reviews on advising, teaching and mentoring with students. The administration proposed that Liberal Arts give a workshop to the Engineering, Science and Business colleges to “teach†them how we manage this. I had to laugh—Our students perceive us as caring about them because—Drum Roll—we actually do care about them! I joked with colleagues that I wasn’t sure how to give a workshop on being a human being.
So, while the communication techniques are no doubt useful, I do maintain that the best way to project empathy is to actually feel it. Even better, feel it and take action to help the person.
