Hello fellow CS members!
So a little background, I've been a long-time lurker of CS, but this is my first post. I work in a call centre for a major technology manufacturer. NDA's and common sense prohibit me from being more specific. My ongoing frustration with the current system in place (the CSAT email survey system) is what finally prompted to finally register on this site!
While this post involves customers to a huge extent, it does not focus on SC's persay. But rather the Sucky CSAT System currently in place by my company and its client. I'm sure many of you who have worked in call centres before are famililar with having some kind of CSAT system in place. Basically the way our system works, is that after we have finished talking to the customer, they receive a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey via email. It asks them rank their overall satisfaction with us on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being very dissatisfied, 3 being neutral, 5 being very satisfied)
This CSAT system is the most assinine flawed system I have ever had the unpleasure of dealing with. Reasons why?
Two actual recent examples that happened to me recently. Last week I received a neutral survey, customer comments stating that the customer was frustrated at having to visiting the store/repair centre just after they purchased their new product. I go in and check my case notes. My notes are along the lines of "had customer reset router and walked customer through reconfiguring it, customer is now online, issue resolved". It seems that the customer likely called in with a separate issue, and got an agent that didn't save any notes. Whereas I saved notes, and thus I get penalized , as this survey pushed me below the cutoff percentage.
Today I come in from my regular two days off, hoping there is a good survey returned to counter balance the bad one. Not only did not get what I was hoping for, but got ANOTHER bad survey to start the month! Customer comments were along the lines of "Store representative didnt know what he was doing and said it was a hardware issue and booked me a second appointment, I called tech support and the agent (me) resolved my issue within 10 minutes. Guess who gets the lovely bad survey to start off the new month with???? Thank god it was such a slow afternoon and they were allowing agents to leave for a few hours I was soooo upset
I understand the need to have some kind of csat system in place, without any kind of regulation/targets it would be an open invite to sucky agents. However the current system seriously SERIOUSLY needs to have a complete overhaul.
Anways, so this wraps up my first post, sorry if I was abit ranty. Feel free to add your other csat stories/ventings here.
So a little background, I've been a long-time lurker of CS, but this is my first post. I work in a call centre for a major technology manufacturer. NDA's and common sense prohibit me from being more specific. My ongoing frustration with the current system in place (the CSAT email survey system) is what finally prompted to finally register on this site!
While this post involves customers to a huge extent, it does not focus on SC's persay. But rather the Sucky CSAT System currently in place by my company and its client. I'm sure many of you who have worked in call centres before are famililar with having some kind of CSAT system in place. Basically the way our system works, is that after we have finished talking to the customer, they receive a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey via email. It asks them rank their overall satisfaction with us on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being very dissatisfied, 3 being neutral, 5 being very satisfied)
This CSAT system is the most assinine flawed system I have ever had the unpleasure of dealing with. Reasons why?
- Customers often fill in the survey based on their overall experience with the company, and not based how their last interaction with that agent went. For example their overall experience may rank a 2 on the survey, even though the customer loves you to pieces and would personally rank you a 4 or 5. Thus penalizing you even if you *WOW* the customer.
- Customers often fill in the survey based on a completely different issue/different agent, than the actual issue that you addressed (and resolved) for the customer. Customers often dont mention previous issues and previous agents often don't save notes (to avoid the survey), so how am I supposed to know! And I end up getting the bad survey as a result!!
- Customers often send in a bad survey if their phone support is expired. Regardless of how empathetic we are, regardless of how well our positioning is and helping the customer explore options, we get penalized for following procedure and not giving away free support!
- Same for when we have to refer customer to a 3pty or things fall outside our scope of support/SOP. Too many times we can bust out all the mad soft skillz on the world, but all too often a bad survey is returned.
- Any survey that is returned with less than a 4, counts against us. A neutral counts every bit as much as a bottom box/very dissatisfied. The concept of a 'bottom box' target really is a moot point.
- How the scoring system works is as follows. The csat metric is expressed as a percentage. It takes the total number of csat surveys returned in a fiscal month and compares it with the total surveys rated 4 or greater. The resulting percentage is your csat score for the month. Anything less than 85%, you get written up and put on an progressive action plan
- Out of all the metrics we are held too, this is one metric where the action plans progress the quickest and can ultimately lead to getting fired. It doesnt' matter if you have otherwise perfect AHT/ACW, attendance, schedule adherance etc.
- There is no wiggle room for the above scoring system. Doesnt matter if you miss by less than 0.5%, no rounding up is allowed. Doesnt matter if it was caused by that one crap bad survey returned for reasons mentioned above.
- Surveys cannot be overruled/dis-counted for any of the above reasons. This is firm. Pretty much all my TL's / supervisors have been great. They totally understand where I'm coming from and I'm sure most TL's agree its a flawed system, but of course their not allowed to say that. They also have no discretion of overturning a BS survey. They are forced to bow to the whims of their own managers / corporate by upholding the flawed csat system.
Two actual recent examples that happened to me recently. Last week I received a neutral survey, customer comments stating that the customer was frustrated at having to visiting the store/repair centre just after they purchased their new product. I go in and check my case notes. My notes are along the lines of "had customer reset router and walked customer through reconfiguring it, customer is now online, issue resolved". It seems that the customer likely called in with a separate issue, and got an agent that didn't save any notes. Whereas I saved notes, and thus I get penalized , as this survey pushed me below the cutoff percentage.
Today I come in from my regular two days off, hoping there is a good survey returned to counter balance the bad one. Not only did not get what I was hoping for, but got ANOTHER bad survey to start the month! Customer comments were along the lines of "Store representative didnt know what he was doing and said it was a hardware issue and booked me a second appointment, I called tech support and the agent (me) resolved my issue within 10 minutes. Guess who gets the lovely bad survey to start off the new month with???? Thank god it was such a slow afternoon and they were allowing agents to leave for a few hours I was soooo upset
I understand the need to have some kind of csat system in place, without any kind of regulation/targets it would be an open invite to sucky agents. However the current system seriously SERIOUSLY needs to have a complete overhaul.
Anways, so this wraps up my first post, sorry if I was abit ranty. Feel free to add your other csat stories/ventings here.
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