“You Say you Want Some Resolution” & FCR

Colin Taylor
First Contact Resolution…FCR- That is the holy grail of call and contact center operators today. “How can I resolve contacts on the first contact?”

As the Beatles sang “You say you want some resolution”…or perhaps I am mis-remembering. Well unfortunately many centers create the barriers to resolution themselves; misguided policies, poorly trained staff, bad agent hires, ineffective coaching, all of these can have a negative impact on achieving the desired FCR. But the most frustrating to me, both as a call center consultant, and as a consumer is the inability to fulfill what has been promised. Case and point, I recently had the opportunity to call Rogers Wireless the largest wireless company in Canada, to ask about some data usage charges that I was billed for while I was at IQPC in Orlando last month. After being transferred a couple of times (another pet peeve I’ll save for another post), I was finally connect with someone in business services that could help. What if they sent me a copy of the data activity log so that I could verify that this was my data usage? A wonderful idea I agreed. With the young lady promising to email the information I ended the call and waited for the email to arrive. A minute past, a day past and finally a week past, still no email. OK I thought, let me call again. Once again two transfers (could be a post I write really soon), and I was connected to someone who said they could help. So after repeating my information for the third time (yes, another poor service pet peeve), I verified my email address only to discover that this was not the email address they had used. Of course a delivery or read receipt or even a follow up phone call could have confirmed that. So we get my email address correct and I am promised that I would shortly receive the email. A minute past and then another and then low and behold an email arrived. I was pleased and confidently clicked on the attachment to view my data log details and my optimism was dashed again. The only contents of the email were a warning as to the security of the contained information, of which there was none. There was no data in the attachment. So I initiate contact #3 for the same issue and as I write this I await some response from Rogers. I really do want to pay my bill, but until I receive detail so that I can confirm that the data usage in question is really mine, I am not going to. So I wait.

How easily and quickly could this contact have been resolved? If after the first call had the promised information been sent, I would have been happy. All that was required for that to happen was to make sure they had my email address correct. Or heaven forbid, simply use the email address on the file (they have emailed me before). Instead this process has dragged out into week number two and I haven’t completed the process yet. I can only hope that i receive the promised file and that it addresses my concerns. If the file doesn’t do this then I am afraid, very afraid that I will need to phone Rogers Wireless again.