The Client

Our client is a major multi-national financial organisation, offering credit facilities to businesses and consumers alike. Channel Strategy has been working with the consumer credit division since the beginning of 2000.

The Challenge

Committed to exceptional customer service, our client had been regularly conducting a Customer Satisfaction Index over a number of years and presenting the results to all its employees so that everyone is aware of their customers' views and ways in which they can improve their service to them. The Mystery Shopping Campaign was viewed as another aid to improve the quality of service they provide, to assist in the training and development of employees and to provide a vital insight into ‘the customer experience'. The challenge was to create a programme that would enable our agents to pose as customers without being detected and devise a scoring mechanism that would be fair and provide meaningful feedback in a positive way.

The Methodology

The key to the successful operation of a call centre is the customer's experience when establishing contact with the organisation and this can be divided into two main areas when that contact is by telephone:

• Call Handling – this covers the technical aspects, such as speed and efficiency of the response, as well as some of the basic communication techniques such as manner of greeting and clarity of communication.

• Problem Ownership – included within this aspect are efficient resolution of the customer's query or issue and the customer's experience of that process, which can be measured by the knowledge and professionalism of the call centre agent to quote just a couple of examples.

Channel Strategy has developed a unique methodology to measure these criteria and provide a reporting mechanism that is both easy to understand and user-friendly in terms of supplying the necessary tools to effect meaningful change in a positive manner.

Since a significant proportion of the calls received into the call centre are from existing customers, we worked with the client to devise meaningful scenarios and create dummy accounts with full contact history to maintain authenticity.

The Result

The reports and recordings from the mystery shopping campaigns have provided a user-friendly framework in which to measure the customer experience when contacting the call centre as well as delivering effective personal feedback that can be positively received and acted upon. This programme has proved an invaluable tool in ensuring that customer service levels are maintained and continuously improved throughout the many changes our client has undergone over the past couple of years. Our clear reporting style and consultative approach have resulted in Channel Strategy being retained to carry out the ongoing Customer Satisfaction Index and an additional Customer Satisfaction Index to monitor and improve the experience of customers carrying out their transactions using the call centre's IVR system. We are also working on developing an interactive training tool based around the systems designed for the Mystery Shopping Campaigns.