Term Paper on "Customer Centric Call Center"

Term Paper 40 pages (10330 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

ability of an organization to deliver exceptional customer experiences the greater their ability to survive in a turbulent global economy. The managing of customer experiences and the quantification of those strategies through SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991) ((Parasuraman, et.al.) for example is providing a strong, scalable foundation for ascertaining just how an organization can consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences over time. Customer-centric organizations of the 21st century are far removed from the stereotypical view of efforts in the past century to motivate call center representatives externally. Research over the last forty years shows that motivational posters and sayings are useless unless the call center representatives see the value of taking ownership of a call and attempting to maximize customer satisfaction every time. Studies indicate when they are given incentives to drive up customer satisfaction, and better yet, when there is financial gain for them, the extra few minutes to make sure a customer is completely delighted is worth it. What emerges from this study of customer centricity in call center organizations then is the fact that customer satisfaction is no accident or not the result of the right mix of external motivators, but of a deliberate attempt to re-order internal customer service processes to guarantee exceptional customer service is delivered every time. This re-ordering of internal processes in conjunction with measurement of customer satisfaction ratings for each call center representative continues to be one of the most effective approaches to attaining true customer centricity. A call center rep may have the best intentions in the world to help a customer calling in, yet if the underlying systems and processes are not in place to enable them to deliver consistently exceptional results, customer satisfaction will be sporadic. Customer centric then is much more than the externalities of keeping a call center staff motivated; it is about creating the underlying series of systems, processes, and foundational elements that allow measurable, scalable, and responsive customer service over time. Evaluating calls based on the criterion of responsiveness, proactivity, reliability, competency, courtesy, effective communication and problem solving all reflect how well the systems and processes have been organized to enable call center performance. In conjunction with this systemic approach to designing in a higher potential for call center customer-centricity, the use of training and periodic feedback is also serve to give call center agents the ability to continually improve over time.

As a result of these systemic or process-based and intrinsic aspects of customer centricity in call centers, this literature review is organized as followed. First, an overview of the concepts and definition of customer centricity, followed by a discussion of the importance of customer centricity and customer focus to organizational effectiveness is analyzed and evaluated. Third, challenges and issues to attaining customer centricity are presented followed by assessing call center performance and quality assurance. The final two sections of this analysis concentrate on building a customer-centric call center, and the essential elements for delivering exceptional customer experience from call centers. Customer centricity has been proven to increase customer loyalty and increase recurring revenue over time for organizations that make this value a core part of their organizational structure (Sharma, Mathur, Dhawan, 2009). The contributory effects of customer centricity to the long-term viability of an organization have also been empirically proven as well (Gummesson, 2008). The intent of this literature review is to evaluate these questions and also look at gaps in existing research, recommending further studies to more fully understand this area.

Overview of Customer Centricity

For most organizations the level of customer centricity they attain is entirely dependent on what their existing cultures will allow for. The very strong and often unbreakable norms and values of any organization can kill any attempts to shift an organization off of technology if it is dominated by engineers for example, or financial engineering if they are bankers and financiers. Yet for the values of customer centricity to be at the center of any organization there needs to be a re-architecting of its very core -- all the way down to its value chain -- to make the transition real. Writing in the Practice of Management, Peter Drucker (1954) stated that "it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper or not." In the classic analysis of marketing's search for meaning, Marketing Myopia the point is made that when customer-centric over product-centric segmentation of markets are defined, organizations have a higher (Levitt, 2004). Drucker (1954), Levitt (2004) and (Kotler, 1967) all advocate customer centricity being so integral to the daily operations of an organization that is every initiative, strategy and program is directly driven by customers' preferences, requirements and needs. In effect an organization becomes a lean provider of customer responsiveness and reflects back to customers across all segments what their greatest preferences and needs are.

True customer centricity is exceptionally difficult to attain and takes a focus on continual improvement through measured results and (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006) and a strong focus on changing the culture of an organization (Sharma, Mathur, Dhawan, 2009). In many cases the lack of customer centricity in an organization is used to also define it. Product-centric organizations that are often highly engineering, innovation and technology driven tend to use the term customer centricity in an attempt to persuade prospects, customers, channel partners and resellers that their products are in fact produced based on their needs (Galbraith, 2005). This consistent practice of attempting to re-label a product-centric organization into one that is customer-centric often also results in customer expectations over time either being marginally met if at all (Galbraith, 2005). In reality in most organizations there is a continual political battle between being product-centric vs. being customer-centric with neither side entirely dominating over time (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006). This presents in reality a hybrid model of customer centricity that many organizations founded by engineering thought leaders, perpetuated through the continual focus on technology adoption curves over customer needs, and the continual adoption of low price strategies begin to realize when their organizations face severe price competition and commoditization (Galbraith, 2005). The greater the reliance purely on technology the greater the need for exceptional levels of continual innovation often managed as a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process (Tomovic, Ncube, Walton, Grieves, 2010). Purely product-driven companies are also more dependent on their platform partners' continued commitment to R&D as well, relying in effect on them to ensure a high degree of customer centricity in their product designs . Intel is an example of a platform provider who is expected to have a degree of customer centricity in their product design yet also be highly engineering and time-to-market focused in the discipline of their development. As a platform provider for many high tech industries Intel manages to balance itself well between these hybrid roles.

The same can be accomplished with services organizations. Balancing a hybrid model of product and customer centrism is how many organizations, foundation on technology, are attempting to migrate to being customer-centric (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006).

Researchers and theorists have often defined customer centricity through thorough analyses and comparisons to product-centric organizations as well. Starting with a comparison of the philosophies between products vs. customer centrism, the former is entirely focused on the tangible, measurable attributes (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006) while the latter is entirely focused on how to bring the customer decision-making process into the product effectively (Galbraith, 2005). Organizations also credit this philosophical difference with entirely different approaches to innovation and new product development, where the customers' preferences, perceptions and unmet needs are taken into account in the new product development and introduction process (NPDI) (Crosby, Johnson, 2006). Customer-centric organizations also seek to define their organizations by their alignment with customers' future goals and objectives as well (Tomovic, Ncube, Walton, Grieves, 2010). In short, customer-centric cultures see the continual investing in relationships as more critical than continually moving down a product timeline or moving one product generation to the next (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006).

Customer-centric organizations also have a business orientation build more on relationships, with significantly less of a reliance on transactions (Sharma, Mathur, Dhawan, 2009). Product-centric organizations on the other hand are highly transaction-driven and reliant on the product features and functionalities of their systems to differentiate their products from competitors. This transaction mindset, coupled with the eventual commoditization of components, can often lead to highly competitive market spaces that eventually are not profitable. In the frameworks that Dr. Kim and Mauborgne have defined, this would be equivalent to creating a "red" ocean where profitability is often sacrificed in the name of increased unit volumes over time. Drs. Kim and Mauborgne (2004) indicate that purely spending on R&D is no guarantee of finding highly profitable or blue ocean markets, and that instead it requires a more creative, unique and different perspective to find opportunities in the market and fully capture them based on insights from customers with… READ MORE

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