Are call centres so bad they hinder business?

I believe that call centre personnel, like receptionists or sales, are the valuable leading edge of your business. Specialists in communicating with your customers. In my experience there is a low likelihood of achieving the required level of skill when working in a second language and without a deep understanding of the particular culture-of-the moment of your customers.

Call centres are not a necessary evil, they are an important opportunity and customer touch-point. The returns they can provide are comensurate with the quality of the operation and people.

I want to identify with the person on the other end. I want them to care about me and I need them to understand my 'problem' ( =the comany's opportunity). Perhaps one  might be able to achieve that offshore but I haven't noticed it so far.

The short answer to your headline is 'Yes'.

I think one of the worst aspects to call centres is the IVR.  They all seem to be designed by people who never use them.  I've had occasion this last week to phone two organisations and I reckon on both of them I've gone through at least 5 levels of IVR beforre I finally got to talk to someone.  That really isn't good.

Kill the IVR, I say.  Employ some more people (think of the tax revenue and the boost to the economy) and satisfy your customers - finally.

The best way to ensure your customers do not contact you is to staff your call centres with people who do not speak the same native language as your customers. I refuse to call my bank anymore as I spend too much time trying to make myself understood that I never get round to discussing the reason I rang. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to hang up in frustration. Email is now the only solution for me, it may take longer but my stress/frustration levels are much better for it

As noted in this post back in May, the offshore call centre does serve one useful purpose - to frustrate awkward customers.

I really appreciate all the comments, so thank you for your thoughts.

I think a lot of the issues you highlight are covered in the post I wrote today "Abbey- did an IVR survey lock out a customer's account?". This is a good example of offshore, IVR and customer disatisfaction all coming together and resulting in some very bad PR for the bank concerned.

I hope that now credit has become so much harder to obtain, banks may start valuing customers (especially depositors) more and stop viewing them simply as a cost. Even if it's not for a good reason to improve service, I'm not sure that this is a time for banks iritate customers/ voters!