February 23, 2006 11:11 PM
Kathryn
In the last blog entry we talked about how busyness affects our call center employees.
Well, the research doesn't end there. Customers are able to perceive when we are busy through the time they have to wait in queue or the short answers that they receive. All else being equal, when they perceive busyness, they evaluate the service level lower than when agents have all the time in the world to serve them.
I have good news. Research shows the effect of busyness on customers' evaluations of service quality can be partially mediated by the display of positive emotion by the agents. Agents can change the perception of the customer by being positive.
Even if customers reach agents "fit to be tied" because they had to wait too long, the agents can use empathy and defusing anger skills to address the situation. They can use the "positive emotion" skill you will be teaching them to effectively control their facial expression, voice, gesture, or body movement to improve the customer's impression of service quality.
I've heard it said a thousand times, "It's not the event that makes the customer go away angry, it is how we handle it." Looks like research is giving us plenty of ways to handle it!
