Call-center service provider overhauls training to improve customer-rep relationships

In January, NetTel USA Inc., a Farmingdale business that handles outsourced customer contact for some 20 companies, got a call it didn't want: One of its largest clients said NetTel needed to raise the bar on customer satisfaction.

Despite low complaints, NetTel had ranked last among the client's four call centers in customer surveys.

"We recognized a dramatic change needed to happen and happen quickly," says Mike Brunken, vice president of operations. Contract renewal was approaching for the client, a natural gas distributor serving the mid-Atlantic states.

NetTel tried some internal fixes but quickly recognized it needed outside help.

The 15-year-old company hired a consultant to do a comprehensive audit to assess how its reps were interacting with customers and identify areas for improvement. Two months of training for more than 30 call reps and their managers followed.

This kind of assessment is critical, particularly in commodity-type businesses, experts say.

"Customer service is often the only differentiator between you and your competitors," says Randi Busse, president of Workforce Development Group, the Massapequa Park customer service training and employee development firm that NetTel hired for the training.

There are close to 70,000 call centers in the United States, according to Paul Stockford of the National Association of Call Centers.

NetTel, a sister company of accounts receivable management firm Sunrise Credit Services, serves clients nationwide including Cablevision and Newsday.

Connect with customers

Often companies get hung up on metrics but can fall short on the customer experience, Busse says. "We focus more on training on the computer and products and services than we do on soft skills" -- those interpersonal skills that help forge a connection with the customer. Those skills were the focus of the training for NetTel, Busse says.

Soft-skills training is important because without it, "people will communicate the way they've always communicated," says Dan Ritchie, regional director of consulting for Hauppauge-based Dale Carnegie of Long Island, which offers customer service training.

"You have to put yourself in your customers' shoes," he says. They need to feel that you're genuinely interested, and that comes down to active listening, not just working off a script, says Ritchie.

As part of the training, Busse had NetTel's reps discuss what they liked and didn't like in their own experience as customers to raise self-awareness.

Reps were also encouraged to create more of a dialogue with the customer, ask more questions, offer more recommendations and solutions, Brunken says.

NetTel group manager Farica Grant adds that managers changed their assessment forms to go beyond the basics and include questions such as: How do you feel you handled the call? Did you remember to recommend a solution? Did you use the customer's name enough?

When managers go over calls with reps now, instead of dictating what they think could have been improved, they ask the reps what they liked and didn't like about the call as part of a self-discovery process, she says.

Customer service success

Every two weeks reps get refresher tips to reinforce what they learned.

The changes paid off. As of early November, NetTel was leading in customer satisfaction among the client's four call centers, Brunken says.

"When we started the blitz on customer service improvement, I never imagined the increase in our scores could be so large," NetTel president Richard Doane says.

NetTel has seen close to 20 percent revenue growth year-over-year, Brunken says. He says they get many clients that want a U.S.-based call center, adding that NetTel plans to incorporate some of the improvements companywide.