Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

in many of my clients phone statistics can be pulled out of the phone system itself.

The telephone company can give you busy signal numbers.. many times they use these to sell you more lines.

The rest is very company specific. I would start monitoring and look for changes, improvements, and peaks and valleys.

Ari,

My company can assist as well. I get the impression you'd like to do something quick to measure the soft-skill competency of your customer service staff.

One of our associates is a former global customer service manager who would be perfect to help conduct an assessment of this type.

If you'd like to visit off line, contact me at [Email address and phone number deleted by staff.]

There are probably a number of other members that can help as well.

Best,

Tim Keck

Hello Ari,
What you are describing is a very standard job that most full-service market research firms should be proficient at. You did not provide much information about the ultimate goal of this research, your industry, number of calls to be made etc. Therefore, before I invite you to consider the services of my firm, I put forward a few points in no particular order that you need to consider.

- There is little point in conducting this test if you do not plan to repeat it in the future to measure the impact of actions you took as a result of original findings.

- What should the mystery caller do after hearing the 'greeting' from your customer service rep? It would be a waste to just hang up. Would you want to test the reps' knowledge about a particular subject, or perhaps see how they would handle a disgruntled customer demanding escalation of the call? The additional cost for a few more minutes on the phone could provide a lot of valuable data.

- Would you only want to test each location once? That would create validity problems for the gathered data, as call volumes fluctuate throughout the day. You would need to decide if every location should be called at their peak, mid or slowest time. Keep in mind that the time of day also affects staff performance; workers are sluggish at the beginning and end of their shifts, so it would make sense to avoid those periods.

- Do you require recordings of the conversations delivered as mp3 files for distribution to interested parties or for inclusion in a presentation?

- Does your customer service staff have access to caller id? In that case, it might be necessary to spoof or block the calling number.

- Are you only interested in raw data, or do you require a full report, advanced statistical testing, and recommendations section?

- Would you want to also mystery shop your direct competitors? What does 'an average of 32 seconds on hold' tell you? You need context; for your industry, 32 seconds might be the time to beat, then of course, we pray you are not running a 911 call centre.

The above are very important factors, and hardly all that need considering when preparing a mystery shopping research study.
My firm, [URL deleted by staff] Reveal Marketing Research, provides telephone mystery shopping services frequently for clients in real estate development, business services, IT and accommodations industries. We have the expertise, the right tools and most importantly, the right people.
That said, I would be happy to discuss your objectives, timeframe and budget further if you contact me directly [Email address and phone number deleted by staff.

Luke Zukowski