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Posted By Paul Tidswell
I thought I would raise this topic as have had personal experience of this. Is it a duty of care that a company should take into consideration when dealing with it's customers. The stress that can be caused by certain call centres by certain companies can be extreme (I know almost two hours on the phone and transferred from one department and back again having to repeat the same story to each new operator). Surely a better system would be to take the details of the caller and the reason for the call then assess and flag up to the right department and get that department to contact the customer direct then going through one department after another and being lost in the system.
Surely if a process is causing high amounts of stress the process should be reviewed and a better procedure adopted. However, it seems that certain large companies may encourage such stress as it means that the customer may not pursue the issue. What would happen if someone suffered a fatal heart attack due to the stress brought on by this company policy, would they have failed the customer in its duty of care?
Paul
PS. Sorry moderator hope this is better.
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Posted By Phil Errup
Is it really a possibility that a call handler could ever be solely to blame for the said heart failure? Totally agree with what you are saying though, I experienced the same thing as you (saw earlier post) and sympathise entirely. And on some occasions wanted to take drastic action... but what can you do, it wont solve anything? So duty of care I would say is definitely lacking, but whilst you remain a faceless bill payer, they are never going to care, and the more these companies take their call centres to the other side of the world, the more common it is becoming. I live near a huge book company that reminds me of a rain forest, yet to deal with a missing item, I was speaking to someone in the Philippines or some equally local town. I have changed my bank account, cancelled my satellite digital viewing, changed my insurance providor, when is it ever going to be dealt with by those that can?
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Posted By Kieran J Duignan
In my limited experience as an expert witness in claims about work-related stress, unless it can be clearly established that an employer was given clear and unbiguous medical advice that particular actions cause harm asscoiated with stress, it's fruitless trying to establish causation and a claim lapses or is settled for a tiny fraction of the actual cost to employee.
In the case of customer stress, establishing causality would be similarly difficult. As customer abuse is generally less prevalent at the more high-profit end of markets, there's often a trade-off between price and quality of service and avoidance of stress.
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Posted By Merv Newman
I'm not an expert, you would have to refer to Vanguard and John Seddon for that, but the stress experienced both by CC operators and customers is, it seems, built in to the objectives by which employee performance is measured.
The operator will typically have an objective of "dealing with" X customer calls per shift. Say 2 minutes per call. If the operator cannot satisfy the customer within that time limit then the customer will be passed to another operator or department and the first operator will log the call on the time sheet. (or more likely the computer system will do it for them.)
Please note : it is the number of calls that count towards the employee's objective. Not the number of problems solved.
So, the CC operator gains satisfaction by not taking time to resolve your problem. The customer is stressed because no-one seems to want, or to be capable of solving the problem or answering the query. And, importantly, they have to call back.
The CC company, being paid by the number of calls answered, is quite happy to have unsatisfied customers having to call a number or times.
Check out "Command and Control Cultures"
Merv
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Posted By Paul Tidswell
Thanks for that, it is what I suspected but is it right? Still interesting results and I think the only solution on a personal level, stick to a letter as this normally gets a good result, it's just a shame I had the CC experience before doing this.
Having a large client base I suppose a company can absorb the a percentage of unhappy customers. Does this mean that company image is no longer a factor in this modern age?
Not a health and safety issue though so thanks again.
Regards Paul
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