Customer Care Reality 

Customer care involves processes that are complex. Unlike “factory” processes, two or more individuals (agent and customer) are involved, each with distinct goals. These individuals do not collaborate; at best, they negotiate. Additionally, customers and employees are autonomous. For example, in performing tasks customer care staff may skip or repeat steps and recombine processes.

Additionally, the number of complex processes increases as a customer care organization handles more lines of business and volume.  The result is operations managers within those firms find it hard to be successful at what the industry calls Customer Interaction Management ("CIM").

Adding to the problem is that consumer expectations and sophistication are rising, budgets remain under severe downward pressure and technological complexity continues to increase. It always seems to boil down to three seemingly competing tasks:

• Delivering higher quality customer service experiences
• Deriving more revenue from existing clients
• Reducing the cost of customer service