Customer Service

[Damp Squarie]

Does anybody work in this field?

... or have an opinion on whats wrong with Government customer service

Thanks in advance...hopefully.

 

[Mr Q]

Well I'd say that continuous cuts to the public service have meant that where twenty years ago there were six people available to take calls from the public there is now one person and a computer. Its an easy place to cut costs, and the public sector isn't exactly competing for your business.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is entirely dependent on how much tax you're prepared to pay.

 

[Slax]

I want to ring a company and not have to talk into a phone for what I want or hit 15 more buttons.

 

[god_of_the_universe]

customer service? that doesnt exist these days.

 

[fitzy's_eyes]

Originally posted by Milne
customer service? that doesnt exist these days.

I work for one of those call centres in customer service.....but I give 'great' service to each and every customer!
What do you want to know?

 

[jacqui9]

I work in the Government in customer service. The quality of customer service is down in the public service as ignorant managers make decisions without thinking how it affects people. They never ask us for our opinions even tho we work on the front line.

 

[Damp Squarie]

Do you have Customer Service Teams? Or more to the point, Team Leaders?
Im thinking of applying for a Team Leaders job but want to know some background...its with Centrelink.

 

[fitzy's_eyes]

Originally posted by topjars
Do you have Customer Service Teams? Or more to the point, Team Leaders?
Im thinking of applying for a Team Leaders job but want to know some background...its with Centrelink.

at my call centre we have approx 24 teams of about 10-14 people......each of these is managed by what our company calls a team manager. the managers are often not as knowledgeable as the people on the team which is why they are there mainly to 'manage' the team. our teams range from customer service, order admin, issues investigations to premium solutions. not all teams are solely on the phone either. the order admin deals with applications and corro so they are mainly doing data entry stuff.....while the customer service people are constantly on the phone doing both sales and service enquiries. our calls are routed depending on the type of enquiry or type of customer. for example in my premium solutions team we deal with a lot of the high spend and valued customers as well as complex issues and sales.
we have targets we have to meet every month and everyday....like adhering to our schedule, making so many sales and getting a certain score in call quality. all our call are monitored and we have to talk to the customer only (not other dpts) for a certain amount each day. we get incentives if we meet these targets and if we don't we get put on performance management eventually.
Anything else?

 

[Damp Squarie]

Thanks a lot fitzy's_eyes; I appreciate your patience.

You touched on targets, Can you elaborate on " customer service" targets (best practice) that your'e measured on?

ie Ive often been told "Do you mind if this call is monitored?" ...but I often wonder whether the person was ever fed back that e.g. his manner sounded abrupt or whatever.

The way I see it; is that a customer will be satisfied if your product or service has high relative worth to them.
All customers differ though.

I can relate to the value of something increasing with improved quality or decreasing with increasing cost but what I dont understand is how this"perceived" customer service is measured from a personal view point

What metrics are measured to "lift" your customer service to a person enquiring over the front counter?

Weve all been handled with dignity and we've all been handled obnoxiously.

Jacqui9 do you have any examples too?