Although telephone volumes have decreased over the years, the majority of banks and telcos have stated that they still receive a lot of customer inquiries.
DBS said its 500-strong customer support agent workforce, which is based in Singapore and comprises mainly Singaporeans, manages over 250, 000 answers from consumers each month. More than 3 million concerns are generated annually, according to this figure.
Singtel, which offers numerous programs for customers to reach them, including Whatsapp communications and its client line, reported that it handles more than three million customer queries annually. OCBC reported that it has received 1.4 million calls this time.
In addition, the volume of inquiries may rise during significant events, such as service problems, putting more stress on customer service staff.
” In a ( mobile network ) outage, you must understand that the volume and the traffic ( of calls or chats ) that comes to us is not five times or ten times, it’s probably 100 times more than normal”, said M1’s director of customer experience and retail Stamford Low.
We rely heavily on our machines to grow, so we can upgrade them with the status of the failure. So if you called us because you were experiencing company difficulties, the voicebot would be able to inform you, he said.” Our specialists are aware of this and are working on it,” he said.
” So we can do that so that the customer does n’t have to wait for a while before speaking with an agent and then hearing the same thing anyway.”
OCBC said it schedule more officers to work during the busiest times of the month, when they are typically asked for more inquiries about bank accounts and credit card statements, while DBS said it has real-time tracking screens and early warning signals to help its groups quickly ramp up resourcing to maintain spikes in call volumes.
Companies CNA spoke to said they do not avoid calls because some clients complain that they ca n’t reach a customer service representative in these circumstances.
According to OCBC’s Mr. Indra,” We make our very best effort to clear as many calls as possible,” adding that staff members from other divisions may also be stationed to handle customer calls.
There could be delays as a result of a rise in calls, according to Singtel’s deputy chief executive officer Anna Yip, who is a customer service representative who some users complain they ca n’t reach during significant incidents.
” When incidents happen … it’s not just the ( customer service ) agents ‘ role, it’s actually a whole team that crosses many departments like networks, customer agents, marketing is also involved”, she said.
” It’s basically like a war room situation… because we do n’t want to give customers wrong information. We want them to … know that they’re being taken care of, but we also need to give them correct information whenever we can, because if we really do n’t know what’s going on, we ca n’t lie”.
” So that’s why the coordination is very, very tight, and it’s not just about the front-end messaging, but all the way to the back, those people who are fixing things and turning things around, giving us the update. It must remain a single team, please.
” We do n’t stop any calls or … say ‘ we do n’t take any calls because we have nothing new to tell people’.
” It could be that, in the very, very rare situation where we do have a call surge, then of course, there is a bit of delay for people to come through, but we never stop communication, and we certainly never stop people from contacting us at all.”
RISING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS
Assoc Prof Cheah believes that as consumers become more digitally savvy, this could have contributed to higher expectations for customer service.
Studies conducted a few years ago indicated that consumers were still alright if they had to wait a while for their issue to be resolved, she said.
However, many people today are intolerant to even a quick refresh of the screen that takes longer than a minute or a call that is not resolved within ten minutes.
” It’s the digital age that we’re living in, where a lot of information is being provided very quickly, so … to a certain extent, we are being conditioned to expect a fast response”.
OCBC said it has implemented a number of internal procedures to shorten the average handling time for its customer service officers in order to keep up with rising expectations.
This includes allowing its customer service representatives to approve requests for loan waivers as soon as they are satisfied, as well as handling disputes involving credit card transactions.
Previously, they were not able to do this and had to raise such requests to another team to process.
The bank’s efforts appear to be working, with the bank now exceeding its 60-second call-return goal of 80 %.
In comparison, it picked up 40 to 50 per cent of calls within the target last year.
We obviously had a fair bit of catch up last year when I started this new position, but we’ve been using data to improve our ability to be more proactive, according to Dennis Lee, OCBC’s head of service channels and transformation.
” ( We ) want to be proactive, to ( be able to ) tell customers that the moment they face an issue, we ( already ) know and before they call us, we are able to educate them on how to self-help so that they can resolve an issue … without having to call us or wait on the phone”.
The bank is currently testing out push notifications to explain why payments made after a customer’s card is rejected, as well as free web call services for customers who have credit card issues while traveling abroad.
After realizing that inquiries about account balances and credit card issues accounted for the most calls, it developed this plan.
” What I’m trying to do is whenever they tap at a failed transaction straightaway, we will detect why their transactions were rejected … so we’re trying to proactively inform customers … and this is where they can go and self-help immediately”, said OCBC’s Mr Lee.