Mistery Shopping Case Study On Telecom Industry
Mistery Shopping Case Study On Telecom Industry
Mistery Shopping Case Study On Telecom Industry
Case: Telecommunication provider uses Mystery Shopper Visits and Calls to assess how well the organization manages a service environment in which agents can perform well in that environment
Situation: A telecom provider conducted a mystery shopper based assessment of call center service practices and customer service in service centre nationwide. The research highlights the opportunity to differentiate themselves from competitors by improving the quality service. This study is not about assessing agent performance, but it is about assessing how well the organization manages an environment in which agents can perform well via such management activities as: Appropriate staffing, provision workflow, training and coaching practices and design or organizational strategy. Methodology: A total of 350 mystery shopper visits and 80 mystery shopper calls, representing nearly 250 minutes of talking time, were made to leading telecommunication firm between January to March 2008. The 80 calls and 350 visits were made using the same scenario to ensure comparability of results: a non existing customer calling to inquire about a new mobile subscription. In all cases, the scenario was open-ended to allow the call centre agent the opportunity to demonstrate his or her skill and expertise in call handling. The calls are recorded for the purpose of evaluation. Mystery shopping analyzes 2 key categories of performance: Accessibility and service agent performance. Accessibility: Mystery shopper calls: Accessibility reflects the ability to reach the call center and to reach the agent. The attributes reflect various technology options, such as the use or non use of an IVR and how delay announcements and music - on-hold services are structured. It also considers whether there is adequate technology in place, such as having enough phone lines for callers to get through. Worldwide, the average waiting time was 155 seconds across all calls. Mystery shopper visits: Accessibility reflects the ability to reach the customer service. The attributes includes waiting time to be served and service time. Overall Service Agent Quality
Overall service quality reflects how well the call center and customer service agents are managed and thus how well the agents perform during the call and face-to-face service. The attributes reflect various levels of skills and engagement exhibited by the agent during the call and face-to-face interaction; it should not be interpreted as an individual agent evaluation. To follow the depth of analysis, the service quality results are reported as overall performance (which aggregates all attributes), as well as by three subcategories, namely:
Courtesy standards: Basic foundation skills, such as greetings, getting the customer's name, restating the inquiry and the closing. Engagement standards: Finesse-based skills, such as probing, establishing rapport by using the customer's name and demonstrating attentive interest, controlling the call, providing complete and appropriate solutions on the first call, and providing a positive service encounter that is a positive role model for the customer contact industry. Revenue-generation standards: up selling/cross-selling processes and the quality of up selling/ cross-selling.
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Telecom Call Centers: Mystery Shopper Study Shows Room to Improve Across Countries
For telecom providers, global research highlights the opportunity to differentiate themselves from competitors by improving the quality of their service. In a recent study of service performance in the telecommunications sector, the U.S. ranked the highest in overall performance of telecom call centers in seven countries (64 percent), closely followed by the U.K. (63 percent) and Indonesia (60 percent). However, the low performance rankings displayed by all of the countries in the study reveal much room for improvement. In the second installment of ICMIs Global Service Index (GSI) Report, a mystery shopper-based assessment of call center service practices across selected countries, we present the results of our study on the telecommunications sector. Developed and executed by OmniTouch International, an ICMI Global Partner headquarted in Singapore, the GSI focuses on a different industry sector each quarter. Other sectors include banks, consumer electronics and hospitality. The results can be used to identify country, regional and global trends on an ongoing basis, and to document individual company performance standards within each selected country.
Its important to note that this study is not about assessing agent performance, which is, itself, the result of many interrelated processes and activities. Rather, it is about assessing how well organizations manage an environment in which agents can perform well via such management activities as: appropriate staffing, provision of workflow, training and coaching practices, and design of organizational strategy.
Australia. There seemed to be a substantial difference in customer experience among those calling two of the providers, which answered in less than one minute, two others, at less than seven minutes, and one provider for which average wait times clustered at 45 minutes. China. China presented another highly skewed sample with the vast majority of calls occurring in a timely manner of less than two minutes. However, there was an interesting outlier of calls that had a much longer wait time of eight minutes. India. Wait times in India appeared to be very short, with a majority coming in at under 10 seconds, tailing off to a maximum of three minutes. Indonesia. Indonesian call centers performed similarly to Indian centers in that wait times were very short and, even at the maximum, were less than three minutes. Singapore. In the Singapore telecom market, we also saw very fast response rates, with the majority of wait times under 25 seconds. U.K. Wait times were consistently short in the U.K. less than 50 seconds. U.S. The U.S. had a consistent performance at four minutes or less, which was higher than some of the other countries. There were two other clumps in the data one at around 16 minutes and another at 42 minutes. With respect to the usage of IVR systems, whether push button or speech recognitionbased, there were a variety of approaches used across the centers to route callers. Overall Service Quality Overall service quality reflects how well the call center and individual agents are managed and, thus, how well the agents perform during the call. The attributes reflect various levels of skills and engagement exhibited by the agent during the call; it should not be interpreted as an individual agent evaluation. To allow for depth of analysis, GSI service quality results are reported as overall performance (which aggregates all attributes), as well as by three subcategories, namely: Courtesy standards: basic foundational skills, such as greetings, getting the customers name, restating the inquiry and the closing. Engagement standards: finesse-based skills, such as probing, establishing rapport by using the customers name and demonstrating attentive interest, controlling the call, providing complete and appropriate solutions on the first call, and providing a positive service encounter that is a positive role model for the customer contact industry.
represent a high reliance on the callers IVR choice selection to clearly indicate the reason for the contact. On the opposite end of the spectrum, call centers in the U.K. ranked the lowest in overall courtesy performance (27 percent). It was the lowest-performing country in all courtesy attributes except greeting, where it placed fourth at 80 percent. One contributor to the low overall performance ranking was due to the lack of scores across U.K. call centers for the call closing attribute. The U.K. agents were not rude or curt; on the contrary, they were friendly, though casual in their closing. However, while agents tended to thank customers for the call, they failed to offer additional assistance or state their companys name in the closing. Engagement Although it ranked last in basic courtesy skills, when it comes to the finesse-based skills, the U.K. performed the best at engaging the customer through more complex social processes. In overall engagement performance, U.K. call centers ranked 84 percent, well above Singapore, the second highest performing country at 68 percent. In U.K. centers, agents performed well at using the customers name during the call (90 percent), along with portraying attentive interest in the caller (90 percent), solid provision of a solution (94 percent) and the ability to deliver a resolution on the first call (93 percent). Its interesting to note that U.K. call centers deliver these strong engagement values while meeting relatively fast answering speeds. Thus, a linkage between answering speeds and value creation during the interaction has clearly been identified and planned. Engagement standards for the U.K. telecom industry ranked significantly higher than the countrys banking industry (53 percent, overall performance) from the GSI 2007 fourthquarter results. U.S. call centers came in fourth in engagement performance (65 percent), performing very poorly at role-model behavior (45 percent). A common observation was that agents sounded monotonous, scripted and robotic with the exception of one center that had an exceptionally high performance in this attribute. The lowest-ranking country in engagement performance was India at 52 percent. Aside from a reasonable use of the customers name (81 percent), there was an extremely weak performance across all other engagement standards. It has been remarked in the mainstream press that the Indian telecom industry is one of the fastest growing in terms of increasing subscriber base. However, while calls are answered quickly, the level of engagement is low and this may reflect the fact that callers are signing up even without the perks of superior service.
In 24 percent of the interactions with Indian telecom centers, callers commented that the agents were not comfortable with English, and seemed to be fumbling trying to converse. In 20 percent of the interactions it was noted that the agents greeted and started the conversations in Hindi, a key regional language in India, and then proceeded to speak in English following the callers lead, even when the caller had requested the English option in the IVR. Revenue Generation U.K. telecom call centers ranked highest overall in revenue generation performance (76 percent), followed by U.S. centers (68 percent). The U.K. centers offered an extremely consistent performance in terms of asking the caller to pursue a sign-up status, as well as offering an upsell or additional incentive for signing up. However, the quality of the upsell in U.K. centers showed definite room for improvement (65 percent), compared with high performances in Singapore (100 percent), Australia (91 percent), U.S. (80 percent) and China (80 percent). U.S. centers trailed the U.K. at 68 percent in overall revenue generation performance. Although the U.S. scored relatively low at asking for the business (68 percent) and offering the upsell (60 percent), the quality of the upsell delivery was significantly higher at 80 percent. In U.S. telecom centers, agents who are comfortable enough to ask for the upsell tend to be excellent at the quality of their offer. These agents could represent internal benchmarks of service for their respective centers for this attribute. Telecom call centers in Indonesia ranked lowest in revenue generation performance at 6 percent. For these call centers, it was noted that there were no upsells offered at all, with an extremely low percentage of asking the caller for their business (13 percent). At the same time, the speed of answer for Indonesian telecom centers is extremely fast, which may reflect a focus on keeping wait time and handling time short rather than generating revenue.
For Questions or further information about ICMIs Global Service Index Report, please contact: Rosaline Oh Director, Client Services OmniTouch International (65) 6324 4844 [email protected]
Mystery Shopper Programs and Reports To learn about developing a mystery shopper program to improve your companys touchpoint performance, or for more information about ICMIs Global Service Index Report, including the opportunity to purchase a detailed report by company, please contact us. Outside of the U.S.: OmniTouch International Rosaline Oh Director, Client Services (65) 6324 4844 [email protected]
In the U.S.: International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) Susan Hash Publications Director 646-201-5480 [email protected] TAGS: Benchmarking, Acting on findings, Service Level, Quality, Customer satisfaction, Costper-Call, Average speed of answer, Inbound Sales, Outbound sales, Measuring sales success
** http://4service.ru/en/trust/Projects/telecom/
Telecommunications is one of the most developed industries in Russia. The existence of large technologically developed telecom providers, constant technological innovations, and price competition all demand maximum business efficiency and effectiveness. Mystery Shopping helps telecom companies control their own, and dealership-based, retail networks as a means of controlling and enhancing customer acquisition and retention. Professional service quality in telecoms retail, and in call centers, increases client numbers, client satisfaction and customer loyalty. 4Service has great experience and vast expertise of Mystery Shopping project implementations in the telecommunications industry. Our mystery shoppers have already completed more than 12,000 mystery shops in this industry, with variations on the technique including:
Dealer loyalty stimulation. Part of such programs is the stimulation of salespeople to demonstrate solid knowledge or to make sales recommendations of telecommunication products and services. Retail chain monitoring (both the companys own employees and dealer employees) for telecommunications companies. Call center service quality monitoring.
Evaluation scenarios can include customer service monitoring for both existing and potential subscribers, including corporate and individual, contract and pre-paid customers. Attention is often focused on the promotion of new tariff plans, services and operator offers. The most popular 4Service products for telecommunications are:
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