Indian call centers live and die by the responses to customer satisfaction surveys. Customers selected at random are called by an outside agency and asked fifteen questions. Of those, the only one that matters is “Overall how would you rate the agent you spoke with?” Based on the answers to that question, the call center receives a weekly score on a 1-5 scale. The call center aims for 50% of respondents to rate them a 5, the highest, and for 85% to rate them a 4 or higher. From our experience, that seems like an unattainably optimistic goal.

Though each Indian call center is different, our tipster explains how his measures success, inside…

(Photo: sarae)

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An outside firm calls the customers after they’ve had contact with us, and asks them to score us on a scale of 1 to 5. And yes, we get a weekly report of the scores for each site. [We have] minimum targets (which is for 50 percent of callers to rate us a perfect 5, and 85 percent of callers to rate us a 4 or a 5.) And despite what people may think, they REALLY care about those scores. A single low scoring call has managers scrambling, arranging meetings, people tracking down the recording, action plans, training sessions being arranged, charts, graphs…. etc.

It may seem to the customer like no one cares, but that’s because no one at our site is authorized to get into contact with the customer to apologize or acknowledge the complaint. (another issue to send up the totem pole.)

There are a series of around 15 questions they ask.

What’s your overall experience with the company,

How likely are you to recommend the company to your friends,

Overall how would you rate the agent you spoke with,

How would you rate their attitude, the level of resolution they gave you, the level of personal attention…. etc.

The questions about the company are used by the company themselves (and also to give the customer a place to vent so they don’t have to take out complaints on the company on the agent), the “overall how would you rate this agent” is the sole factor used in the scores, and the rest (along with comments) are used by trainers to see what exactly lead to the low score so we know what to correct.

— CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER

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