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Hello, police, this is an emergency For emergency services call centre agents, the consequences of getting it wrong can be almost unimaginably horrible, says Deven Pamben. What do Tesco, the ITV, Specsavers, and Orange have in common? Their customer service or call centre directors were all at the Call Centre Focus Directors Club dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel on November 19. Mark Lewis was there too. The call centre industry was not immune from the impact of rising unemployment and money worries in 2009. As the first point of contact for many customers, agents copped more than their fair share of flak from stressed callers. Home working promises to fix many call centre problems but uptake is slow. Already big in the States, could 2010 be the year a technological revolution changes the role of the customer service agent forever. “I’m going to let the public decide.” So said Simon Cowell as he condemned Lucie Jones to the whims of a fickle public, unleashing torrents of acrimony and, almost single-handedly, drilling the word “Jedward” into the public consciousness… By the following morning, the torrent of acrimony would find its voice in the first of the 3,000 calls which Steve Morris’s team of 20 ITV call centre agents would take from angry X-Factor viewers. |
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