Leveraging your assets and understanding your customers

Outbound Post-Call Surveys enabled by the Call Centre: You mean I can survey client calls with my existing call centre solution?

With the advent of integrated contact centres and hosted call centre solutions, one element for many organisations that is sometimes forgotten but has recently been frequently asked by many clients is this: how can we conduct customer feedback loop or post-call surveys via the contact centre? 

In essence, the customer feedback loop or post-call survey gauges how your customers value the service you provide, or even how they value the last call your agent just had with them. The approach many organisations have taken to solve this problem in the past has been to utilise third-party marketing companies, send out links to online surveys, email out questionnaires or - in extreme cases - distribute paper surveys to customers. This approach has led to surveyed clients either opting out due to the hassles required to respond, or even forgetting how the service experience affected them.

Thus the results captured by this approach are in many cases out of context or inaccurate. Respondents are no longer linked to the issue they contacted you about, nor are they linked to the emotions felt at the time, and so response data is inconsistent and out-of-date. Furthermore, the response data doesn't allow emotion to be conveyed as it would over a voice recording.

But there is a way around this! The possibility exists via using your Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, hosted call centre solution or existing call centre solution to conduct your own post-call surveys via the IVR after each call, or even dial out to select customers to obtain targeted results efficiently and effectively. Approaches like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) or general market research can be applied. The recommendation is to keep the call survey focused, short and easy for your clients to complete.

Maintaining this customer focus enables your organisation to foster a better customer-centroc focus model and one that is in tune with how your clients actually value your organisation and its services. Furthermore, it enables you to act upon what your clients see as necessary for your call centre to improve. Best of all, a post-call survey will not take up any agent time to conduct, and provides an impartial client view with both quantitative and qualitative responses.

- Simon Costello