The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

Customer Service - Exclusive Interview With James Eyre, Head of UK Secrtor Marketing - Vertex

Do you believe there is a correlation between the service you receive as a consumer and your loyalty to the supplier?
There are a number of factors that impact customer loyalty and retention. However, research I’ve undertaken for a utilities organisation highlights the relationship between Customer Service Satisfaction performance and loyalty.

From the research, a strong correlation emerged - In those months where Customer Service Satisfaction was low, the percentage of customers who left the following month was higher. Conversely, when satisfaction was high, more customers stayed.

Based on the research, for each 1% improvement in Customer Service Satisfaction, there was a 0.125% increase in customer retention and loyalty.

This meant that on a customer base of four million customers, each 1% improvement in Customer Service Satisfaction equated to an additional 5,000 saved customers.

With average annual revenue per utilities customer of £500, each 1% improvement in satisfaction equated to saved-revenue of £2.5m per annum.

It really is worth investing in your service propositions – this cost of failure is perhaps the most misunderstood and underestimated impact to your bottom line.

Talking about bad experiences, where do companies go wrong with the service they provide?
Companies can unwittingly generate some amazingly bad experiences by implementing business decisions without an adequate understanding of their impact on customer satisfaction. On top of the lost revenue from low customer loyalty, customer experiences driven by flawed decisions can result in large volumes of complaints and repeat calls, both of which can have a dramatic impact on operational costs.

Consider a high-street bank that implemented a customer identification and verification process that was so customer unfriendly, that it’s implementation led to a 20% increase in customer complaints from bono fide customers who felt that the procedures were extremely onerous and were left feeling like potential fraudsters if they couldn’t remember their pin number. Over the same period, AHT increased and there was a significant reduction in first call resolution.

Whilst customer security is extremely important, leading customer focused banks understand how to design and implement regulatory and risk compliance in a way that protects customers and themselves and, at the same time, ensures that customers are treated with respect.

It’s all about using voice of the customer to influence strategic direction and keep decision makers close to their base.


If you had to give just 1 tip regarding the use of technology in relation to improving customer service, what would your tip be?
Many organisations see technology as the sole answer to the business challenges that they face. However, the implementation of technology on top of flawed processes and policies can sometimes result in flawed processes that are simply more efficiently flawed. For example, with Vertex ContactPlus, the implementation of call recording and playback, enhanced with innovative reporting and analysis capabilities is only effective when it is combined with PerformancePlus – our best practice coaching framework and strong culture of leadership focused on performance management and learning.


If you had to give just 1 tip regarding staff in relation to improving customer service, what would your tip be?
When we analyse calls handled by agents that receive the highest customer satisfaction results there are quite a few observations that differentiate their calls. Using the ContactPlus evaluation framework, those agents who provide a great service rate higher on skills and behaviours such as listening, questioning and empathy. However, if I were to distil these skills and behaviours into one tip it would be – “Always try to deal with each customer the way that you would like to be treated”. It really is the golden rule, and all of us who work in call centres also spend enough times speaking to call centres as a customer to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers.

If you had to give just 1 tip regarding business processes in relation to improving customer service, what would your tip be?
Linked to Point 10 below – implement a robust framework for measuring customer satisfaction and first call resolution at agent level and introduce a performance management and coaching framework to improve these 2 key metrics.

In your opinion, how should contact centers measure the level of service they give?
First Call Resolution (FCR) is arguably the most powerful & influential performance metric for contact centres. No other metric has as much impact on overall performance as FCR because, in a single metric, it allows you to focus on improving quality, reducing costs, improving customer & staff satisfaction, and increasing sales & customer loyalty - all at the same time.

- Reduce operating cost – Based on our research and experience, if your call centre is operating at an average 65% FCR, then 38% of your contacts are avoidable repeats.
- Improve customer satisfaction – FCR is the highest correlated measure to customer-service satisfaction.
- Improve staff satisfaction – With higher FCR, agents take fewer repeat contacts from customers whose previous queries weren’t handled appropriately. Repeat contacts have a dramatic impact on the morale and motivation of excellent customer-facing staff. In fact, amongst high performers, this is one of their main reasons for leaving your business.
- Sell more – Satisfied customers whose query is resolved in a timely manner are 20% more likely to accept a sales offering.
- Increase customer loyalty – Industry research shows that if a customer’s query is not resolved on the first contact, there is a 34% probability that the customer will consider moving to a competitor. This goes down to 2% for customers whose query is resolved first time.

About Vertex Customer Management:
Vertex is an international Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) and Customer Management Outsourcing business (CMO) with clients in the private and public sectors. Vertex employs 10,000 people who spans 4 continents and 70 locations, delivering solutions to a wide range of international clients 24/7. It provides a range of transformational service solutions to deliver outcomes for our clients in the areas of BPO & CMO, IT Applications, Services and Products, Consulting and Transformation, and Decision Sciences.