Momentum Preferred`s call centre has won the prestigious Ask Afrika CCNG Service excellence award.
The finalists and winner of the 2003 Ask Afrika CCNG Service Excellence Award were announced at the CCNG awards banquet held at the end of May.
Managing director of Ask Afrika, Andrea Rademeyer explained that the Ask Afrika Service Excellence Award was launched in order to celebrate call centres that "exceeded customers` expectations". Call centres have become an integral part of servicing customers` needs and their performance is linked to the success of the business today as service agents, sales agents or for sales and marketing.
Ask Afrika initiated the CCNG Call Centre Service Excellence Award in 2001 because of the company`s belief in service excellence and recognition that excellent customer service is essential to business. The number of participating call centres has also increased. Back in 2001, 26 call centres participated and this year (2003), 34 call centres participated. Ask Afrika has been at the forefront of call centre measurement for the past seven years.
This year the judges assessed participating call centres either telephonically (by means of mystery shopping) or through a personal visit by an assessor (to listen in on live calls). Both methods enabled the assessors to gather accurate information about the service quality that the call centres were delivering.
Rademeyer explains that to find the winner of the Service Excellence Award, the assessors looked for the call centre that went the extra mile for the person on the other end of the line. "The winning call centre - Momentum Preferred - was selected because it left the customer both delighted and with a memorable experience - one where their call centre agents delivered more than the customer expected," she explained.
Assessors looked for the following criteria:
* Enough knowledge and confidence to untangle the customer`s needs or expectations and deliver an excellent one-stop service with warmth and kindness.
* The ability to enthusiastically respond to customer needs and to come across as truly caring and willing to help and assist customers.
* The ability to be compassionate, to handle difficult customers with extreme courtesy and politeness turning their agitation to delight.
* Enthusiasm, friendliness and courtesy.
* An appreciation for urgency, confidence and of course good product knowledge.
"Finding the winning call centre was not an easy task as all 34 call centres were brilliant on all aspects that were covered during the assessment. However, there were a few that were just that little bit better than the rest," says Rademeyer. "What set the top three call centres apart and made them finalists and the winner of the Service Excellence Award, was their ability to go that extra mile for clients."
The top 10 finalists were:
1. Momentum Preferred (Winner)
2. Momentum Client Services
3. Absa Telephone Banking
4. Absa Platinum Direct
5. Telkom Yellow Pages - Durban
6. Standard Bank Telephone Banking
7. Old Mutual Unit Trust
8. Telkom Yellow Pages - Cape Town
9. Absa People Management
10. Standard Bank bluebean
Excellent habits
She explains that these call centres answered the client`s query and then went that bit further ensuring that the client had a great experience. "Agents listened, understood the client`s situation, respectfully questioned the client, realised the urgency of the client`s call and then speedily, as a result of their vast product knowledge, answered the client`s query if it fell within their power. What also stood out was the fact that these call centres had established a level of service expectation that saw clients contacting them specifically as they were confident that their query would be resolved," says Rademeyer.
"Momentum Preferred showed that it had instilled a consistent habit of excellence in all its agents and in their operations the agents always left the customer feeling not merely satisfied, but delighted. These are call centres that aim to give every customer the ultimate experience all the time, even at 16:55 when the bus for home is leaving in five minutes," adds Rademeyer.
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