Relive old times. Waiting times are rising again in many places in customer contact country: at congregations (see also the tweet about 14020), at the Tax Authorities, but also at KPN, T-Mobile, bol.com, Rabobank and various energy companies. Even in the States people complain about the waiting times Disneyworld, once a beacon in customer service land.

You don't have to think long about the causes. Municipalities have had more work on their plate (Ukraine, increased demand for documents due to corona, financial questions about tax assessments) while the counters are understaffed due to sick reports and staff shortages, according to the AD. It has become considerably busier at energy companies: understandable when you read that the value of the average outstanding bill between the summer of 2019 and the end of 2021 increased by 40% has increased to €550. At Vattenfall, the number of people requesting advice on the installment amount has increased by 20% compared to the beginning of this year. The question is what the impact of 'payment problems' in other sectors will be on the accessibility of customer service. Also from the last Courtyard sessions from SUSA showed that the service levels at various companies have fallen to an absolute low point. 150 customers on hold is no exception.

Accessibility and resilience

In recent years, the customer contact sector has invested heavily in optimizing accessibility. It now appears that all the automation that has been implemented cannot prevent you from being swamped. Even the choice to temporarily close off a contact channel does not lead to a solution, but to a waterbed effect. All optimization steps of recent years have been done with more or less predictable circumstances as reference. But that is different from investing in resilience, which is necessary to cope with major turbulence, or proactively developing and testing scenarios. Anyone in customer contact land is aware of the fact that we are in a VUCA world to live? An exception may be the facility services who, commissioned by GGD GHOR, have shown that they can scale up very quickly.

What does the company journey look like?

Maybe it's time that instead of just the customer journey, the corporate journey which gets more attention. In what circumstances can the customer service department end up? In which situations touchpoints with customers come under great pressure and what can you do about it yourself or with the help of partners? In short, how do you make your customer service organization more shock proof?

Dutch contact centers undoubtedly have a disaster plan and a contingency scenario for major IT disruptions (P1 in IT terms). But what has the Netherlands arranged as a customer contact country for the next 12-24 months? Inflation is rising so fast that only in-house contact centers can still find staff – unless the facility managers go well above their minimum collective labor agreement. Settling conversations about consumer financial problems is not so easy to automate. And a major flu wave with or without a new corona variant in the autumn just halves the occupation of customer service. It's going to be exciting times. (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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