Turning Customers Into Their Own Call Center Agents

摘要

Ideally, call centers would be available to offer round-the-clock support and provide superior assistance tc meet every customer's unique needs. Doing so, however, can exhaust both human and technical resource Some companies are turning this challenge into an opportunity, finding a solution in an unlikely place.rnCall Center In CrisisrnIndustries that rely on call centers for support and sales often face a conflagration of human resource and IT challenges that leave them wishing for an emergency helpline for call centers. Let's take a look at a theoretical print media company as an example — a company that offers subscription-based magazines and newspapers to its customers. The company's customer care staff answers calls for paper deliveries and subscription renewals. It also recently began managing the advertising specials in daily papers and the weekly magazines. This is an excellent extension of the media company's business, but it presented new challenges. Rapid growthrnfrom on-sale items and specials caused a need for additional applications to support these new features. The customer service representatives (CSRs) had to be trained on each application. The reality for the CSRs, however, was redundant data entry combined with the hassle of accessing each application separately.