One thing customer service should aim to do is to resolve issues quickly. Customers should not have to wait long periods before they know what the resolution of their problem or concern will be. Waiting can breed impatience, and sometimes anger and resentment.

Nowhere is speed the issue more than in emergencies, especially medical emergencies.  Of late, emergency rooms are jammed with people, so hospitals have been trying to figure out how to best expedite their  patients’ (customers) wait times. The Battle Creek Enquirer reports the following:

Emergency rooms are getting busier, forcing hospitals to try innovative tactics to cut delays — such as stationing doctors at the front door to get a jump-start on certain patients.

Some are publishing wait times online, via text message and on flashing billboards in an attempt to defer non-emergency situations away from the ER and into urgent care centers.

And in 2012, hospitals are supposed to begin reporting to Medicare how fast their ERs move certain patients through, a first step at increasing quality of care across the board.

Efficiency and new ways of approaching patients are the backbone of the ER’s attempt to speed up their processes. Perhaps one concept that business customer service can take away is good triage: figure out what is wrong, how urgent it is and who can best solve it.

One thing that creates customer resentment is when representatives follow a script that may have nothing to do with what the customer is talking about. The use of scripts is more common with large companies with overseas call centers. Scripts are constraining–they don’t allow the representative to think and provide on the spot solutions.  In fact, the Ottawa Citizen reports that more companies are removing scripts:

AmEx and a handful of other companies say they ARE listening. They’re taking call-centre reps off-script and off the clock, giving them scope to solve callers’ concerns. The result, they say, is happier customers and, equally important to the bottom line, happier, more productive employees.

But why would such a business no-brainer take so long? One reason: that shocker of a recession.

…Rosemary Blatt, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, noted: “There is growing evidence that centres that invest in the skills of the workforce and provide discretion to solve customer problems have lower turnover, better service quality and higher revenues.”

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Call+centres+unscripted/3452998/story.html?cid=megadrop_story#ixzz0yC2mWUMs