The operations improvement cycle part 1 of 3 – introduction

An effective customer service is no coincidence.

For a contact center to meet customers’ expectations and where employees thrive, work methods, processes and results need to be constantly monitored and improved.

Bernhard Ödin has more than 20 years of experience in creating outstanding customer journeys; from the service interaction to staffing and analysis.

According to Bernhard, there is no limit to how deep you can dive into the science behind how to run an efficient and quality-assured contact center.

When he helps Telia’s customers, he employs a simple six-step model that can be applied to all businesses that handle customer flows.

It doesn’t matter if you have eight or several thousand employees. Everyone can streamline operations and improve quality by planning, measuring and following up.

– I have the best job in the world. It is always very rewarding to get feedback from the customer that the work we did together has created a value for their business. Improvements make it better for everyone: for our customer, for our customers’ customers, but also for us at Telia as we get a better usage of our systems, says Bernhard.

It can always get better

Over the years, Bernhard has worked with numerous customer services in different industries. He says that everyone he meets carries out steps of the operations improvement cycle, even if they are not aware of it.

– When I start asking questions, it always becomes clear that there is a method to work, even in a smaller customer service. Also, everyone always wants to work smarter to help their customers better.

Efficiency improvements in a customer service can yield great results. In a customer service of 800 people, a 10 percent efficiency increase corresponds to 80 FTEs.

– So far, I haven’t met a single client that didn’t achieve measurable efficiency improvements. But for those who work in operations every day, it can be difficult to see the forest for all the trees.

In upcoming articles, we will go through all the steps in the improvement cycle for contact center operations.