As a dealership increases service revenue and the number of technicians, they will reach a point where investing in a call center makes financial sense. The question that everyone struggles with is when.
Why Have a Call Center?
Your first thought may be “Why would a dealership want a call center?” There are two reasons: to save money and to make money. There are definitely costs associated with operating a call center, but these can be managed and the results can improve the company’s bottom line.
Reducing Cost
For a dealer that does not provide managed network services, the call center can help reduce unnecessary service calls. In many cases, a client calls in with an issue that can be resolved with telephone assistance. Some dealerships will send the call to a technician and let them resolve the customer’s issue.
But as the number of technicians increases, along with the number of machines being supported, this process becomes less efficient. It relies on the technician being in a position to answer the client, and this will affect the calls in the queue and possibly delay the response to the client needing phone support.
Resolving a client’s issue with phone support is definitely less expensive than sending a technician out to solve an issue that the client could have resolved. An effective call center employee should be able to resolve several issues every hour, while sending a field technician will typically require an hour or so. Depending on the number of calls resolved, the savings should be significant.
Generating Revenue
Many dealers fail to take advantage of their call center as a revenue source. Dealers often have call centers that help with printer driver installation, network troubleshooting, and other services that are not included in their service contracts. They may do this to provide good customer service, but they are losing revenue that they rightfully should earn.
If you have any doubts about this, call Microsoft for help with an issue. One of the first things they request is a credit card number to bill for the support. They understand that having the necessary knowledge is valuable and they charge for it.
This can be a hard conversation for the person working in the call center. They may not like telling a customer that they will be billed for this service. You should help the call-center worker understand that sending out a technician will be more expensive than resolving the issue over the phone.
One way to address this problem is to let the customer know that they can purchase an add-on to the imager’s service contract. This add-on will cover help-desk support. If the customer agrees to purchase the add-on, waive the charge for the current call. This method minimizes customer frustration and increases recurring service revenue.
When to Start
The answer to this question depends on the type of organization you have. If you provide managed network services (MNS), then the call center should be part of the organization early on. The call center should be able to resolve many of your customer’s issues remotely. Remote problem resolution is imperative for providing good service in the MNS arena. Some dealers choose to outsource their MNS call center, and that may be a good choice if they are only doing network support.
For dealers that support both MNS and MFP service, having the call center internally is probably a better choice. This allows the call center to service all of the clients. If IT support is outsourced, the initial call can be routed to your call center. If the problem is beyond the ability of your internal support, it can then be routed to the outsource company.
For MFP dealers, the decision to create a help desk is more complicated. You might review the number of calls that your technicians close over the phone. As that number rises, and you have a need to add additional service personnel, evaluate the situation and see if hiring a call center person would be a better choice.
Another possibility is to use a setup or shop technician as the initial resource for resolving customer issues over the phone. When that workload begins to demand a significant amount of the setup/shop technician’s time, it might be the right time to move forward with a call center.
Call Center Do’s and Don’ts
Do
Make sure that the individual working the call center has the personality and desire to assist clients. The person on the call center will interact with most of your clients at one time or another, and the impression they make will have a huge impact on how your customers feel about your company. Think about your interactions with call center representatives and how they made you feel.
Provide the designated employee the training they need to be effective. While they might not need the skills of a technician, they do need the skills to operate the equipment and help others do so over the phone.
Make sure they have the necessary tools to help customers. For general MFP support, they will need equipment to walk through the steps with a client. If they are supporting MNS, they will need the ability to remotely access the customer’s computers to help install print drivers and troubleshoot issues.
They will also need to have common software programs such as Adobe or Microsoft Office, etc., so they can walk through issues the customer might be having with the print driver.
Make sure that the dispatcher has training on what types of calls should be routed to the call center. You should also make sure that there are appropriate call types so you can track the results of the call center.
Don’t
When evaluating the performance of the call center, understand that the only metric that matters is how often they resolve the issue. Hold time is annoying to customers, but even worse is having to call back multiple times to get an issue resolved.
Do not allow the calls that are handled by the call center to affect the metrics of the technicians in the field. In some cases, the service management software may be configured to look at any call as a potential recall. When the issue is customer training, you do not want that to be mixed in with the service calls that are generated by an equipment failure.
An Important Decision
A call center is an important decision that can significantly improve your business. Take time to evaluate what you hope to accomplish. Take time to plan the implementation. Properly executed, you will have a tool to take your company to the next level.
