Earlier this year, banking giant Lloyds TSB piloted a scheme where its call centre agents worked without scripts.  The pilot was an instant success and within three weeks of the trial, the model was replicated across all of Lloyds’ UK call centres.  In this article, we shall see why this was such an easy decision to make and investigate whether the idea could be replicated for call handling teams specific to the field service market.

Spence Rankin, head of change management at Lloyds TSB, explains the thought processes that led to the pilot and eventual roll out.  ‘We believe that with scripts, staff didn’t fully engage the brain and actually listen to questions being asked by the customers.  Reading from a script all day is just not challenging.  A few experienced staff even ignored the scripts altogether, but this created problems if they also ignored the compliance material which must be presented exactly.’

The most immediate change apparent during the trial at Lloyds Sunderland call centre was that the staff ‘loved having a more natural interaction with the customers.’  This is important because it addresses one of the fundamental problems implicit to taking many phone calls - boredom through repetition.  Staff who are engaged with work perform better and in the experience of Lloyds, are more inclined to stay, with staff attrition numbers falling since scripts were binned. 

The improvements didn’t stop there.  Customer satisfaction scores went up, while concerns over calls drifting and therefore forcing up the average call handling time proved to be unfounded, with call times actually decreasing once the scripts were taken away.  ‘This is because the agent concentrates on the questions being asked rather than script, and therefore gives the answer or finds the information from the system quicker than before,’ explains Rankin.

The good news is tempered slightly by the requirements of moving off script.  Vital information must still be available to staff, so knowledge bases must be kept very current.  Spence Rankin offers up some other challenges that moving away from scripts can throw up.  ‘One of the early issues we had to overcome was that the script was still in the head of the agents.  The biggest challenge is the coaching which has been a huge undertaking but one that we were happy to have because of the benefits this offers to staff and customers.’

Rankin’s point concerning training is pertinent because it takes us right to the heart of this issue.  As we have seen, there is much compelling evidence as to why any call handling operation should consider abolishing scripts, but the problem is not the theory, it is the execution.  Too many organisations show no faith in their customer service staff – the label “call handler” which is often used implies nothing more than glorified secretaries, taking messages and reiterating information.  Where this mindset exists, there is little chance of funding being made available for the training needed to allow agents to work with a degree of freedom. 

Paul Mackenzie, practice director for service consultancy CM Insight comments:   ‘If you don’t trust your agents, a script won’t keep them in line.’  The inference is that if you are terrified of abandoning scripts, it is likely that you don’t believe your staff are capable of coping. 

nPower is an organisation which has invested time, money and faith in its call centre staff and in this strategy, there is no requirement for call scripts.  Like Lloyds, nPower recognises the importance of training, and has a 12 week training and induction programme which includes lots of work on structuring calls.  Many call centres rush new starters through training in a couple of weeks because they are desperate to get them on the phones.  But because staff arrive on the phones ill-prepared, historically scripts have been essential in guiding them.

Andrew Bewley, head of training and development at nPower, says you must underpin your strategy by employing people with life experience.  Not only can older people manage a conversation more effectively, according to nPower, they are better equipped to deal with angry callers.  Reflecting this belief, 73 per cent of 1800 employees in nPower’s three call centres are now over 24.  This ratio has been turned around completely, with the majority of employees previously being under 24.

The overall effort is not just about improving the customer experience, it is about re-evaluating the worth of a phone call.  ‘We want our people to have conversations.  Our call length has probably gone up (since abolishing scripts).  This fine by us because the public are more aware of our sector and if people are happier to pick up the phone and enquire about us and the services we offer, and we are happy to encourage this.’

This point is important because it highlights the difference between those call centres who view customer contacts as a nuisance; something to simply process, and those who see an (often rare) opportunity to interact with the customer base.  Such thinking will be familiar to regular readers of Service Management magazine, which has long championed the idea that field workers should uphold and in some cases even spearhead efforts to professionalize customer service.  If this is the case, why undermine the efforts of these staff by offering a poor phone-based customer service experience?  

Consider the situation faced by the team who offer customer support for PlayStation gaming consoles.  SCEE (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) uses the courier Parcel Line to deal with its next day technical swap outs.  According to Andy Barker, director of consumer service at SCEE, Parcel Line offers: ‘all the things that are important to us – secure boxes, electronic signature capture, and a 99 per cent delivery success.’

It is imperative that this exemplary service is backed by the efforts of the call centre, and it would be tempting to use scripts to ensure that the correct information is gathered to ensure a seamless swap.  Yet, much like the others we have seen in this article, Andy Barker and the team want customers to have a relaxed, naturally flowing conversation, and so they have devised a strategy to accommodate conversational and practical needs.  ‘There is a natural sequence that we must run through in order to ensure that we only exchange genuinely faulty products.  Then we undertake a structured data entry process within Siebel (SCEE customer management system) that again insures accuracy and adherence to process.  In other words, although we don't use scripts as such, we do use trouble shooting flow prompts and system-based step by step guides that take the agent through the call flow,’ says Barker.

Telephone feedback is taken from customers to ensure that each stage of the service timeline is accounted for.  In other words, there are no weak links in the process and the fact that PlayStation owners tend to be loyal to each new generation of hardware that Sony releases is in no small part helped by the premium that SCEE puts on the service experience.

There are situations where accuracy is paramount, with regulatory matters in particular, which necessitate a heavily structured call.  As the SCEE example shows us, it is possible to keep structure without an impersonal call.  Paul Mackenzie suggests thinking about the tone of each call as much as it’s content to create a more natural style.  ‘When agents open the call with a question such as ‘can you give me your account number’, it immediately sets a very domineering tone.  Often, the customer only wants to know something straightforward, such as a store opening time, or a postcode, so the process of taking the customer details is as pointless as it is time consuming.’

One of CM Insight’s clients is a Cancer research charity and the decision was made to conduct a study which compared the relative success of calls which used a script and those which took a looser approach.  For the unstructured calls, the question ‘why are you interested in this charity’ was posed to act as a starting point.  ‘This immediately put focus on what really interested the caller and they began relating personal experience.  Not only were staff free from scripts, but they began building a good understanding of what was driving callers.’  The end result of the experiment was that the free flowing calls coincided with the highest value donors.

Many organisations are turning to automation as a way of handling many of the process-orientated tasks which may previously have necessitated a scripted phone conversation.  Jim Hennigan, managing director of speech recognition company Eckoh, explains that huge cost and labour savings can be realised thanks to vastly improved call automation technology.  ‘50 per cent of those people consulting the National Rail Enquiries automated service are repeat users.  The technology works and is improving all the time.  If you call in the morning about a journey, and then call again in the afternoon, the system will ask you if you want a return journey.’

In another example, Hennigan cites the service offered by ParcelForce, which allows customers to track deliveries over an automated system.  It takes no leap of faith to see the application in the world of field service – how many calls do you receive asking about delivery or appointment times which could be handled in this way?  ‘You could have an automated service which calls or sends a text to the customer the day before the appointment to check that the appointment is still viable.’

Hennigan says that a lot of the work his organisation carries out involves studying how conversations work.  By allying this intelligence with a well designed system, it is possible to handle most eventualities.  It is imperative however, that you allow a ‘get out clause’ by offering agent intervention should things move away from the plan.

By using this approach, the call numbers your agents field should fall, which eases workload pressure and allows them to focus on giving the best possible service to the customers when they do take a call.

There seems to be little reason today, given the advances in knowledge base technology and automation of repetitive or process-intensive tasks, why any industry would make its staff follow a tightly defined script during a phone call.  Business is all about people, and those organisations who invest and value their staff already realise that by stifling their front line workers, they create myriad problems.  Field service is an industry which by definition is customer-facing, so the removal of unhelpful, robotic phone conversations is a must for those who wish to continue improving.