Reference no: EM131445103

Question: The customer service call centre at ABC is a high-volume operation answering approximately 25 000 customer queries per week. ‘To provide customer service that delights' is its key strategic objective. To reflect this priority, customer satisfaction is a key performance indicator and the Operations Manager's bonus depends on the achievement of service level targets. Of these, the speed of response target has the highest weighting and is set at 85 per cent of calls being answered within 20 seconds.

As at other call centers, 20 seconds is believed to be the threshold beyond which customers become dissatisfied with the speed of response. Some research sponsored by the Operations Manager has confirmed this belief. It was found that 98 per cent of customers who were answered within what they thought to be 20 seconds were happy with the speed of answering. The percentage dropped dramatically to 69 per cent when the perceived speed of answering was greater than 20 seconds. Interestingly, although 82 per cent overall said they were happy with the speed of answering, the call centre statistics from the time of the survey indicated that only 42 per cent were actually answered within 20 seconds. These statistics are produced automatically by the phone system and displayed continuously on the manager's PC.

The speed of response target is not used to assess the performance of the employees because the manager believes that setting such targets would cause them to rush calls, which results in errors and rework as well as customer complaints. Although the number of customer complaints is also used as an indicator of customer satisfaction, the only complaints counted are those addressed to the Managing Director (MD). These are sorted by the MD's office and relevant ones sent to the call centre for immediate action. The office also provides monthly statistics on the nature of the complaints.

Complaints statistics highlight areas for improvement and the quarterly customer satisfaction survey provides feedback on that improvement in the form of a satisfaction index. A sample of customers are asked by a firm of market researchers to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of the call centre's service and the responses are multiplied by importance weightings for each aspect to arrive at an overall index. Provided the index is no worse than in the previous survey no further action is taken. Periodically the weightings, which are calculated by regression analysis, are checked. If they are found to have changed substantially, the new weightings are used, but this can result in an unwelcome decrease in the index which the manager believes is probably caused by the method of calculation.

a. Critique each of the measures used at the ABC Customer Service Centre. How useful are they as measures of customer satisfaction?

b. Suggest alternatives and explain in which ways they might or might not be better than the measures currently being used.