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Friday, September 5, 2008
Observational Research for Customer Service
We were retained by a client who wanted to evaluate and refine their telephone customer service process. We believed they should observe the customer experience and find out what customers liked and disliked about their interaction with a CSR. So we recommended doing some observational research with customers followed by a set of questions and discussion.
Customers were recruited to a central facility where the interviewing room was equipped with a phone. Customers were asked to call Customer Service, make a request, and then describe what they liked and disliked about the experience. The interviews were spread out over 2 days.
On the first day, the consensus was that customers did not like the amount of time the CSR spent with “small talk” and trying to be friendly. Rather, they wanted the CSR to get right to solving their problem or addressing their issue.
On the second day, we conducted more interviews. During the first call, the moderator noticed that the CSR’s presentation was different and that it was more consistent with what day one’s respondents wanted. After the first interview, the moderator asked if the client had changed their CSR process. They had. For 1,800 CSRs in a state two states away from the research! They had called back the night before and had all 1,800 CSRs retrained and up and running with a new process, based on what they heard from their customers. Talk about actionable research!
posted by John Riester at
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