American express
1. Customer Call Center
American Express's Asia-Pacific operation center in Sydney covers Japan, Asia-Pacific region and Australia, and implements centralized operation management, but the specific location is not completely concentrated in one region. As far as the customer call center is concerned (the organizational structure is as shown in figure 1), the direct service targets of institutions in Sydney are mainly Australia and New Zealand, while the customer services of other countries and regions such as Hongkong, Indian, Singapore and Taiwan Province Province are mainly local. The difference is that in the Japanese market, the local customer service department only keeps a few people, mainly serving the local platinum card customers, while the service for other ordinary customers is completed by the Sydney customer service center.
The geographical dispersion of the customer service department of American Express Company mainly considers optimizing resource allocation, reducing costs and improving service efficiency and quality, such as making use of the resource advantages such as convenient communication in local languages and cheaper labor prices, but this does not affect centralized management. In figure 1, the customer service operation management department can allocate tasks across regions with the help of advanced scientific management tools. For example, when the call center in Sydney is busy, you can transfer the call to the call center in Hong Kong or other idle call centers, without keeping customers waiting for a long time. In this way, while improving service efficiency, the existing resources are maximized. The customer service effect analysis and management information department is responsible for the centralized management of customer service quality in each region, such as index assessment in each region and regular cross-regional summary and exchange meetings. Customer opinion collection department, using the same customer questionnaire, collects and summarizes customer opinions in various regions as one of the basis for assessing the service quality of the department.
2. Customer Service and Back Office Support Department
The customer service and background support department provides background business support for the customer call center, and can also receive and process various service applications sent by cardholders by mail or fax (such as modifying the address of the statement). Take refusal to pay and dispute handling as an example, the general process is as follows:
* After receiving a call from a customer, the call center will automatically transfer it to the background support department through the case system if further background investigation is needed, and at the same time, the customer is required to fax or mail the necessary written documents (such as purchase orders) to the background support department.
* The image team of the backstage support department first processes the written materials provided by customers in the early stage, and then puts them on the image platform (based on the Internet) that * * * can enjoy. After that, relevant issues will automatically enter the work queue of the corresponding dispute settlement team according to different regional sources. If the problem comes from a Hong Kong customer, it will automatically enter the work queue of the Hong Kong dispute resolution team.
After the problem is solved, the problem in the work queue will be closed. Front-line telephone service personnel can see the record of problem solving at any time through the * * * sharing system, and accurately and timely reply the processing process and results of each business to customers.
3. Bill Printing and Card Production Department
The card-making center uses the 5×24-hour punching method to make cards for Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries and regions, which can realize automatic card sealing and automatic entrainment of promotional materials.
The report production center adopts the 7×24-hour report production method to produce reports for Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Bar code technology is used in the bill making process. Through the barcode on the bill, the system can automatically distinguish different countries and regions and promotional materials that need to be packaged. If a link goes wrong, the system will automatically stop.
In terms of operation quality, American Express not only adopted the strategy of improving automation level and reducing manual operation, but also formulated strict quality management system and inspection procedures. For example, the bill printing process involves four sampling steps, and the sampling personnel in each step need to check according to the scientific sampling ratio. Take the statement to Japan as an example. The center in charge of this area produces 600,000 statements for Japanese cardholders every month on average, but the average number of customer complaints about the statement service is less than 1 per month, which shows the high quality of its operation.
High-quality customer service management
High quality, low cost and high efficiency are the goals pursued by American Express, and service quality is always in the first place. American Express has many years of experience in quality management, and has formed advanced management ideas and relatively perfect means and systems. Limited by space, the following focuses on its customer telephone service management experience that is worth learning.
1. Improve the basic operation process and improve the service efficiency in all directions.
(1) Provide different service hotlines for different products.
American Express has set up different hotline numbers for black gold card, platinum card, ordinary credit card, debit card and business card, which is convenient for customers to quickly enter the target functional area after dialing, so as to avoid reducing efficiency due to the long voice tree and making customers feel cumbersome and inconvenient. For the convenience of the cardholder, the telephone number is printed on the back of the card.
Based on the customer value of different products, American Express decided to provide customers with complete manual or voice services, provide free telephone calls or charge local calls, and different products correspond to different service teams.
(2) Develop the automatic voice service function as much as possible.
At American Express, 33% of customers' call problems are solved by automatic voice service. Automatic voice service functions include: card activation, account balance and details inquiry, integral inquiry and exchange, password modification, etc.
(3) With the powerful information function of the system as an auxiliary means, the manual service is ensured to be fast and accurate.
Human services are divided into different groups according to customer value. After the customer calls for manual service, according to the card number and password entered by the customer, the system can automatically identify the product type, customer value (such as consumption records and credit records), and whether to cross-sell products, and automatically assign them to the corresponding service teams. Customer service staff's desktop system will automatically pop up the customer's data information and account information, without asking and verifying the customer's identity. These types of information include: customer consultation history; Records of cases requiring background support; Provide personalized retention measures for customers preparing to cancel their accounts; Corresponding cross-selling information; General basic information. Customers with different products and different values have different specific contents displayed on the information platform. Customer service staff can not only answer customers' questions accurately and quickly, but also actively promote suitable products or take attractive measures to retain customers according to their different characteristics.
(4) Set up a special operation coordination group to guide the operation of front-line customer service.
Before launching marketing activities or releasing new products, American Express usually accurately predicts the workload and makes suggestions on the number of people to be equipped. With the help of work plan management software, combined with the busy state of service personnel in various regions, the workload is distributed in real time to ensure the efficient operation of customer service.
2. Constantly tap the potential and promote the continuous development of service quality to a higher goal.
First of all, every customer service staff will record at least 10 calls every month. The supervisor will assess the accuracy, responsibility, enterprise and customer satisfaction of the customer service staff according to the answering process and the screen images used.
Secondly, in order to ensure the consistency of telephone service quality in different regions, the Quality Management Department holds a seminar once a week, which is attended by regional quality management departments, advanced service quality departments and telephone service evaluators from 1 1 countries and regions. Through horizontal comparison and learning from the experience of advanced departments, find out the gap, analyze the possibility of improvement, and design and implement the improvement plan.
Finally, American Express not only strives to improve the service level of customer service staff, but also makes an overall analysis of the call demand to improve the quality from the perspective of reducing or adjusting the number of calls from customers. For example, by analyzing the problems raised by customers and the reasons for telephone transfer, optimize the system or process, reduce the call demand of customers, try to solve the problem once and try to avoid telephone transfer or subsequent processing; Actively encourage customers to use online services and voice services; Negotiate with the marketing department to plan and launch new products or promotional activities in time without affecting the quality of customer service. The transformation of production mode has promoted the great progress of productivity while reducing production costs and improving production efficiency. Similarly, for a credit card company, the operation mode from decentralized to centralized is essentially a revolution of specialized division of labor and resource optimization and integration, which is an inevitable choice for its development to a certain stage and will certainly improve its operation efficiency and management level. The successful operation of American Express's centralized operation mode strongly proves this point.
1. Centralized operation mode is an ideal way to reduce costs and improve quality.
The practical experience of American Express shows that when the business develops to a certain stage, adopting centralized operation mode can obviously reduce the cost and improve the quality. For example, centralized business card printing and document making can concentrate financial resources on purchasing and maintaining advanced equipment and reduce repeated investment.
On the basis of centralized management, American Express's telephone business can uniformly dispatch resources across regions, rationally allocate tasks, make full use of production capacity, and take advantage of the low price of local labor.
In addition, centralized operation is also conducive to the implementation and timely update of more complex business processes, which is convenient for quality monitoring, risk prevention and data information management, especially for centralized operation, unified management and close integration of front and back offices of customer service. It is of great significance to the high standardization and unification of service standards and the stability of brand image and service quality.
2 centralized operation should follow the principles of low cost, high efficiency and high quality.
When establishing a centralized operation mode, we should focus on the content, not the form, and we should adjust measures to local conditions, not across the board. Different business contents can have different centralized forms. When the objective conditions change, the specific forms will also change. The only criterion to judge whether it is centralized, how it is centralized and how effective it is is is whether it can reduce costs, improve operational efficiency and help improve service quality. As far as American Express is concerned, the scope or form of concentration in different departments is different. For example, the customer call center, the direct service target of Sydney operation center is Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and the customer call centers in other regions mainly serve the local area; Except India, the paper production in other regional markets is concentrated in Sydney. These eclectic arrangements embody American Express's operating principles of low cost, high efficiency and high quality.
3. Scientific and technological means is a necessary condition for the successful operation of centralized operation mode.
Without highly automated operation and management, it is difficult for American Express to complete the task of making documents and making cards in so many countries and regions. Similarly, without the support of technology and network, it is difficult to centralize the operation and management of its cross-regional customer service, and it is difficult to ensure the close contact between the front and back office and the high efficiency and high quality of service. It is scientific and technological means that make it transcend geographical restrictions. It can be said that centralized operation must be supported by advanced scientific and technological means. Otherwise, even if the jobs are centralized, it is only superficial accumulation, and it is difficult to achieve the goal of truly improving efficiency.
4. Advanced enterprise values are the soft environment for scientific centralized operation.
In the value concept of American Express Company, the core content is to provide quality service to customers, coordinate and unify actions, cross-regional teamwork, respect the performance and development of employees, and pay attention to enterprising spirit and responsibility. As an important part of new employee training, these values have been deeply integrated into employees' thoughts and actions, and 100% customer service is their highly summarized belief. In such a corporate culture atmosphere, although they are far away from different countries and have never even met, their common values and beliefs enable them to unite and cooperate at any time, regardless of geographical and departmental restrictions. It can be seen that centralized operation is not only the concentration of operation mode, but also the concentration of management means, and it is also the concentration of all employees' thoughts and actions.