News: Customer Service/Care
Executives urged to align customer service and business goals
27 May 2008
Managers worldwide need to "strategically align" their customer service provision with the business goals of their companies, it has been suggested.
In a new survey, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories questioned executive-level professionals in 47 countries and concluded that there is a notable gap between what they promise and "what customer service operators see".
Entitled 'The Executive Disconnect: The Strategic Alignment of Customer Service', the study polled managers from sectors including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, manufacturing and technology.
"Approximately one-third of the participants were from companies with 500 agents or less, while another third were from very large organisations with 2,500 agents or more," remarked a Genesys representative.
"The size of companies' customer service operations ranged from under 100 to more than 10,000 employees, and respondents included more than 1,500,000 contact centre agents, as well as back office, branch and field level support professionals."
Only a fifth of chief executives and another fifth of customer care professionals said they would describe their contact centres as "very strategic", although both groups agreed that customer service is key to a firm's brand identity.
