BT Call Centre Case Study

The Importance of Caller Experience  on Customer Perception

This case study is old, but nonetheless just as relevant today as in the time it refers to.  BT was privatised in 1984.  As part of the programme to ensure that the public saw benefits from the privatisation, and that it was not just a money-raising venture for the government, BT was required to demonstrate an improvement in public perception of the service they delivered.  BT was independently audited over the following years; the diagram below illustrate the outcome.              

BT management were initially mystified by the steady deterioration of perception despite huge investments in mending phone boxes, improving service availability and increasing the range of services offered.  In-depth customer questionnaires revealed that the customer’s perception of BT as a whole was overridingly determined by the experience the caller received when they called BT’s call centre operations.  

But BT had not made any significant changes to the call centre operations, so why had perception declined, rather than stayed flat?  The reason was that during this time private sector call centre operations had improved, meaning that the public’s expectations had risen, so relatively BT’s operations had deteriorated in the public’s eye.  When initiatives to improve caller experience in the call centres were implemented, the public’s perception rose sharply. 

This case study backs up the 2008 BBC survey referred to earlier that call centre experience is crucial to overall perception of organisations.