Blog What did I just say? Good call centers can take a moment for reflection

ViaSource Solutions seeks to maximize the customer experience with every contact.

What did I just say? Good call centers can take a moment for reflection

Business Insider contributor Sam Ro did a somewhat scary thing recently: he looked at the transcription of an old conversation he had with a customer service representative. In this case, the people he spoke to were on the other end of an online chat service at Comcast four years ago.

Revisiting the harrowing encounter, Ro writes that he "remembers [his] heart rate going up" at how frustrating the interaction was and how many times he was bounced around to different providers in the course of a single session.

Looking at the transcript, one can feel a bit of Ro's pain. The exchange is torturous to read, with Ro being shuttled between different customer service reps who decline to answer his relatively simple question about channel subscriptions.

Finally, at the end, Ro details that he did eventually meet someone who gave him a straightforward answer about the cost of different channels, but there was a very clear strain that took place over the course of the conversation.

It's realistic for customers of this company to be worried now that it's been announced that Time Warner will most likely be buying Comcast in an upcoming merger. An FAQ on the Washington Post describes the sort of common questions that customers may very well have in response to a major merger like this.

In this major moment, outsourcing customer service functions may have an especially big effect on how successfully you are able to meet the needs of your customer base, and whether they stay loyal. Establishing a customer service system that is mindful of ways that it can improve might help.