Did you know that a call center can be certified as World Class? I found out from Ryan Bouwmeester through a comment he left here at the PhaseWare Files. Once I saw the website, I knew a post from them would be an excellent fit for our audience.
Today I have a post from the SQM Group that I think will be of interest to anyone in customer service and support.
SQM’s World Class Call Customer Satisfaction Certification Program is designed to certify call centers performing at the world class call customer satisfaction performance level. Their customer satisfaction certification program is the most credible and rewarding certification program in the call center industry because certification is based on the customers’ judgement of their experience using a call center to resolve their issue. Having customers’ judge call centers makes SQM’s certification the most credible and rewarding certification program in the call center industry!
In addition, their world class call customer satisfaction certification program assists call centers in their efforts to improve customer satisfaction, reduce operational cost and improve first call resolution.
SQM’s certification program focuses on the customers’ experience using a call center by conducting customer satisfaction phone, IVR or web based surveys within 10 minutes to 48 hours of the customer’s most recent call. Surveys are conducted based on a random sample of customer calls. All customer surveys have 8 or more questions and take approximately 5 minutes to complete. For each call center site, a minimum sample size of 800 customer surveys is required. Each call center site is certified separately to provide distinction and recognition within their own company. If every call center within an organization is certified, SQM will certify the organization as world class call customer satisfaction certified.
Call centers that have greater than 75% of their calls meeting the SQM criteria of a world class call over a minimum of 6 consecutive months will be certified by SQM as a world class customer satisfaction performer. SQM’s definition of world class customer satisfaction is when customers are overall very satisfied (top box response) with their call center experience, their call was resolved and they were very satisfied (top box response) with the CSR. Certification status is good for one year from the time the call center achieved certification. In order to maintain certification status, the call center must participate in SQM’s certification program on an annual basis.
SQM began certifying call centers for world class customer satisfaction in 2006. In the first year SQM certified a mere 3 call centers out of all companies that participated in their studies. By 2009 the number of certified call centers had increased to 17. On average, approximately 5% of the call centers that participate in the SQM studies are certified as world class call customer satisfaction call centers. SQM is proud to announce that over 70% of their tracking clients improve their FCR performance year over year.
For more information on the SQM awards or certification programs, please visit their homepage at http://www.sqmgroup.com
Since 1996, SQM Group has been a call center specialist for benchmarking, improving and certifying sites, managers and CSRs for their first call resolution (FCR), employee satisfaction (Esat) and customer satisfaction (Csat) performance.