At the IQPC Call Center Week conference one of the popular case studies was eHarmony, a dating service website offering "an emotional product." Scott Ackerman, VP Customer Care, who presented the case study, has to manage his call center with delicate care and focus on the customer because of the sensitivity of the product. Ackerman is passionate about helping call center representatives provide value to customers and wants to make sure his call center representatives are no nonsense about teaching customers how to get more value out of the eHarmony site. For example the call center representatives coach customers on how to improve their eHarmony profile pages.
Customers call with fear, curiosity and insecurity, which provides an opportunity for the call center to empower their customers. Similar to Zappos, the eHarmony encourages lengthier and meatier calls with customers. eHarmony doesn’t use average handle time as a performance metric, because for their specific product, more time spent on the phone with the customer is an opportunity to get more information about the customer.
Ackerman’s case study provides eight steps for call center success, including establishing a knowledge foundation, empowering customers, empowering front-line employees, offering multi-channel or cross channel options, listening to the customer, designing a seamless experience, engaging proactively and measuring and improving continuously.
Ackerman wants his call center representatives to be emotionally engaged to the work. With 236 marriages every day, this is an important aspect of life working at eHarmony’s call center. And it isn’t rare day for a call center representative to be invited to the wedding of a customer. Listen to this podcast to find out how eHarmony’s call center employee engagement literally leads to customer engagement!