06 December 2012, 03:41 PM IST
Problem-solving just got easier. Or did it? Well, it was supposed to anyway. This call-centre cult is the new fad and it definitely has caught on in a big way—solutions of day-to-day problems are just a phone call away. (They'll fix everything…er… except broken hearts and fractured relationships of course!) And since call centres have generated a lot of well-paying jobs as well, they are surely here to stay. I have nothing against call centres, nothing at all, 'cept those that have their female employees call people bang in the midst of their afternoon siesta and urge them—in honey-dipped tones, to soften the blow as it were—to take on all kinds of loans or credit cards at deceptively low interest rates and so on. To make matters worse, these girls can be very persuasive and difficult to shake off without being a tad rude. But of course, the poor things are only doing their job.
Anyways, the above was just a chance remark and not the issue I am concerning myself with today. I am trying here to focus on a different aspect of the call centre culture. I'll give an example to show you what I mean. A few days ago, there was a power failure in our locality for about four hours in the morning. Since there had not been any rain, storm or thundershower the previous night, and hence no damage by inclement weather (falling trees disrupting electrical lines etc.) was expected, everyone assumed that it was one of those unscheduled power cuts and supply would be resumed after an hour or so.
When over two hours had passed, throwing the morning routine haywire—no electrical gadgets working, you know, and what are we without them—panic started rearing its head. Trying to telephonically contact the concerned sub-station had proved vain (AS USUAL, because the staff there simply hates disturbance of any kind and so keeps the receiver off the hook!) and so I dialed one of the call centre numbers where, thankfully, the phone is actually picked up quite promptly.
A lady with a melodious voice responded and made greetings appropriate to the time of day, asked for my service no., from which she verified my user name on her system, recorded my complaint and gave me a docket no. All very systematic and efficient. Period. But I simply wanted to know when the electric supply would be resumed, dammit, so that I could plan out the household chores for the rest of the day. But the lady had no idea. In fact, she didn't even know in which part of the city I was located because the address meant nothing to her as she was seated in a different city altogether, connected to me only by a telephone line! To her this was just a call from a user account. It did not matter to her what the fault meant to the user—empty overhead water tank as water could not be pumped up, only a bucket of ice-cold water for a bath because the geyser won't work, menu turned topsy-turvy because of non-function of mixer-grinder, microwave, fridge etc. I mean, the list is long, really long. (At times like these we realize how dependent we are on electrical gadgets). Her training did not cover such intangible issues. Her focus was on efficiency rather than compassion. So after wasting seven and a half precious minutes to go through the drill, I was no better off as far as information was concerned. Yes, I did have a docket no. to prove that my complaint had been registered, and fat lot of good that was doing to me!
More dire circumstances force people to call such help lines, but the drill is identical—cut and dried, with no provision on the computerized complaint form for trivial, insignificant human details to be filled in—namely, how the given problem is really affecting the complainant. Information technology at its most efficient and least compassionate!
Definitions are in order here. These call centres are help lines or service centres. But efficiency is an incomplete definition of service. True, the service the customers expect is a rectification of the fault. But prior to that, there is a faint hope of something else. They want the service provider to empathise. They expect someone to appreciate the unexpected hardship they have been forced to contend with.
Management of consumer anxiety is a critical component of service. Machines are heartless, but human beings aren't. Customer relationship management thus needs the human touch. Trainees at call centres need to be taught the softer issues of servicing. The engineer who designed the consumer service system needs to add to his learning. He used his head meticulously no doubt—time has come for him to put in a little heart. Efficiency plus compassion—THAT is true service.
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