Jananas

I’ve written before about the potential impact that an increase in mobile phone usage could have on our standard call centre model. Basically, that because most customers are not paying for their minutes we should be considering the impact that the financial cost of using minutes (either real or perceived) has on their interaction with us. Namely that they’ll be less likely to put up with long waits and CSRs who can’t help them, and more likely to become irritated with our service.

Last night I woke up out of an almost dead sleep with another question. The scenario starts with one major assumption – that some users have (essentially) unlimited plans and some have a limited number of minutes available to them. The question, at least for me at that moment, is could this information be used by call centres and how would it impact service? I’m also going to make the assumption that only telecoms could act on this information because they are the only ones with access to it (in this case, could using it appropriately give them a legs up in the profitability race?).

Different kinds of service models:

• Take calls from people with limited minutes first, as they have the added pressure of the financial cost of their minutes. They may be less likely to ask for compensation or make a complaint if you don’t waste their time (which is also money in this case).
• Take calls from people with unlimited minutes first, so you could get extra revenue from the people with the limited minutes as they’d be on the phone longer. This is a little of a moot point as (as least for my teleco) all calls into the company don’t count towards your monthly limits. Its also a revenue-centric, big company squashes the little guy view but its still a potential option and so its here.
• Treat everyone equally, and answer calls on a first come first serve basis. Nothing new here and its very likely the status quo.

As a teleco, if I was going to bother to implement any sort of plan based queuing system I might as well make my decision based on customer profitability.

Again, consider this me thinking aloud. I don’t know what the status quo actually is inside Bell or Rogers or Telus or Wind. I’m sure that an employee has already made these same connections and its been talked to death about. But I haven’t and I’m trying to flex my mental muscles by thinking about how things could be different.