10 step guide to crisis management.

1. Responding to a crisis in a world with many
communication channels ...
Energy prices are up by a 1/3 since 2010 and people
are now paying well over a thousand pounds a year to
heat and light their homes.
guide to crisis management
High call volumes come at times of crisis.
Having the right technology in place to support
contact centre staff is imperative.
The contact centre is only one contact channel
available for customers – dependent on the
nature of the enquiry, would it benefit the
company and customers to handle enquiries
across other channels like the web, mobile,
e-mail and social platforms?
Avoid the need for customers to call in the first
place. Is their another channel by which they
could answer their queries? Push out service
updates via social media to communicate with
customers in advance of any issue in order to
minimise impact.
Quickly and efficiently responding across
contact channels to customer queries is key –
is there a mechanism in place to monitor
customer feedback to improve the quality of
products and services and level of response in
the future?
A legacy infrastructure often risks only noticing
failure when all has gone wrong. It doesn’t have
the ability of gathering granular information to
help understand how any issues might be
developing. Investigate your infrastructure to
see if it should be improved, updated or
replaced by more relevant technology.
Given all the tools needed (such as a
cloud contact centre solution), is it
possible, in times of crisis, for temporary
and non-frontline office staff to be used
as agents following minimal training?
It is imperative that all contact centre staff are
trained to handle support in time of a crisis.
Effective communication, getting answers to
customers quickly and consistently across all
channels, can have a huge impact on how
customers perceive your brand.
Do the majority of customers need support
during work hours or do they frequently require
assistance out of office hours? Which are the
most effective/popular convenient contact
channels for customers - focus on these first.
Plan to be flexible
Be integrated
Are all contact centre staff are up-to-date with
the latest information and how is this
maintained through technology? When staff
shifts change, does it affect the transferral of
knowledge – how is this communicated?
Be pro-active
Measure and control
Analyse
Are all contact centre staff are up-to-date with
the latest information and how is this maintained
through technology? How do you distribute
information to and from your data centre to your
contact centre?
Prepare to make adjustments
Enhance resources Training
Prioritise
More than half of
complainants are not
happy with how they were
dealt with.
Furthermore, in almost half of
cases where the supplier
considered the case resolved, the
customer did not.
Flood of complaints leave utility companies hot under the collar
10 step
Plan for the worst case scenario
Household customers
had to contact their
suppliers an average
of six times before
their complaints were resolved.
Source: Report by Ofgem
Utility companies received in
excess of
complaints last year, with billing
problems topping the list.
At Synthetix, we deliver answers to 10 million
questions a year through our web self-service
technologies, reducing our clients’inbound email
and call volumes by 25%. In fact our clients have
reported a resolution rate of 90% by deflecting
queries using web self-service, building strong
customer engagement and satisfaction levels.
www.synthetix.com