Call Centres - important tools in delivering excellent customer service

by Vivien Twyford

Our work in Business Improvement has led us into the world of Call Centres.

Wendy Raikes has taken on a role as co-ordinator of an expansion project for the National Local Government Customer Service Network (NLGCSN). She has been working with the network to help member Councils understand the way that some organisations are using call centres to handle customer enquiries in a timely, efficient and cost effective manner.

I have been working with UniAdvice, the commercial arm of the University of Wollongong, to establish a call centre to fill a very specific need. In addition to selecting the hardware and preparing call centre staff for their role, I have been working with a Task Force at the University to develop some software which will assist staff make a conditional offer to prospective students from Australia or overseas over the phone.

At the start of the process the Task Force visited call centres in Wollongong established by the IMB Building Society and Government Employees Health Fund to get an understanding of other call centre operations which had been designed for a unique situation.

Some of the key issues in establishing and maintaining a successful call centre operation appear at this stage to be:

• having a clear vision of what the call centre is to deliver to the customer and the business
  
• involving customers, call centre staff and management in designing the systems that will be used to support the call centre
  
• focusing equally on information systems to support call centre operators and on systems to keep this information up to date
  
• designing job roles integrated with the vision and the information systems.

We believe that call centres are developing rapidly in sophistication and will be an important customer service tool in the future.

Twyford Consulting Newsletter July 1998