Definition:
“Customer care” refers to the nature and quality of a business organization’s relationship with its customers. “Customers’ include all individuals who have an experience of the services offered by the business organization. Hence, “customers” include existing and prospective customers, employees as “internal customers” and independent organizations (such as parts suppliers, franchisees and commission sales persons) that depend answers to their questions — and services that respond to their needs.
Unlike digital metrics of machine performance, “customer care service levels” refer to metrics that evaluate the speed, quality, satisfactory outcomes and thus the “brand value” of the business organization. Customer care service levels take the pulse of “what happened” in a customer interaction in order to maintain a satisfied existing customer base, as well as to grow through better insights into customer preferences for improving the goods of the enterprise’s goods and services.
Examples:
Popular types of services to outsource are:
– Customer Service
– Informational Services
– IT Repair
– Knowledge Management
– Business Process Management
– Sales
– Financing
Technical Requirements:
The metrics for interpersonal interactions include both objective and subjective measures of service quality. Objective metrics will measure the agent’s speed to answer, to resolve the customer’s inquiries, and the agent’s consistency in resolving quickly similar types of customer inquiries. Subjective measures may involve complaint levels about an agent’s basic toolkit: fluency and accent-reduction in the customer’s language (indeed, in the customer’s local accent) and cultural acclimation for communication that correctly uses local slang. Objective and subjective measures intersect when customers complain, which can also be classified and measured.
Technical requirements for measuring service quality in customer care must take into account the unique parameters of customer satisfaction and brand management. First comes technical proficiency to quickly and accurately respond to the customer’s stated concerns. Second, the customer service representative (“CSR”, or “agent”) must use proper vocabulary, tone of voice, and psychological responses to reduce customer stress, particularly for frustrated customers. Third, quality control requires ongoing recordation and review of all services delivered by CSR’s. Finally, as with all service level metrics, the service provider and its enterprise customer should be continually reviewing the value of the particular service levels to ascertain whether the optimal metrics are being used to promote brand value.
Benefits:
Outsourcing customer care allows a company to focus on their main areas of business, and not worry about other peripheral matters in the organization. Having an outsourced customer care part of the organization allows a company who is specifically trained in areas of customer service take care of issues a company might run into with your customers.