General Motors Changes Call Centers To Customer Engagement Centers
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In its quest to provide the best customer experience in the industry, General Motors is changing things up at its customer call centers by transforming them to what it calls Customer Engagement Centers. These are staffed with expert advisors who reach out to new owners to answer questions, and are empowered to resolve most issues on the spot, according to GM.
“We’re not waiting for customers to come to us,” said Alicia Boler-Davis, vice president of Global Quality and U.S. Customer Experience. “We proactively reach out to offer support and open a dialogue with our Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac customers. This includes our social media team interacting on Facebook, Twitter and popular vehicle forums to offer assistance.”
Some of you may have seen Brandon from GM Customer Service doing his best to answer questions in GM Authority’s GM Forum. That’s what Boler-Davis is referring to.
In addition to giving representatives the ability to resolve issues on the spot, The General can now also collect the voice of the customer and channel the data from the Engagement Centers to its designers and engineers for further vehicle improvements. And this is perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Customer Engagement Centers, as it directly connects those responsible for designing and engineering the vehicles to those who buy and drive them on a daily basis.
GM says that about 300 advisors will be located at GM’s Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, a move that we expect will bring them closer to those who can analyze the comments and act on them directly, perhaps by modifying a product for an upcoming model year or generation. In addition, a subset of social media advisors will be located on the same floor as Boler-Davis in GM’s Global Headquarters in Detroit.
The GM Authority Take
The approach GM seems to be taking is one of proactive customer service with the customer at the centerpiece of its efforts, rather than reactive customer interactions — a great change of pace, to say the least.
In fact, GM general director of Customer & Relationship Services Jim Moloney says that “At GM, we value the relationships we have with our customers and we want to exceed their expectations at every touch point. This is another example of the companywide changes that are taking place at GM to get everything right for the customer.”
So, it’s great to see The General adapting its customer service efforts to the new world, and integrating them into the product development cycle… however, we’re sure some of you might disagree that The General’s representatives are empowered. For instance, we can already think of a certain someone who has been begging for roof rack mount points on pretty much all GM vehicles while wondering why the Cruze hatchback hasn’t been introduced in North America. Not a peep from GM’s Customer Engagement reps about that, though…
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Is that what they call them in India?
I guess GM still has people that have nothing better to do like build better cars so they are renaming things.
This is a deal GM should have just changed the name and held the press release. It shows they are losing focus on the core product building cars. People really care about better product and not what you call Customer Service.
Swallow an elephant choke on a flee. GM keep focused as you can little afford to lose ground. Keep up the momentum!
Scott — I’ll have to disagree with you there.
Having spoken to a few folks in this department, the renaming isn’t the big news here; instead, it’s the ability of a call center employee to input the feedback received from various websites and have it passed on to the design/engineering a few hundred feet down the hall.
This is more than a call center where someone passes on the call complaints to some other department and have little responsibility / empowerment.
These are the folks that seek out complaints, like those we see on this blog, and get them resolved. Unfortunately we do not often get those complainers back here to say they have been satisfied because most of them just copy and paste their complaints on every auto site they can find to disparage GM (or other products) as widely as possible. Therefore they do not go back to all those sites and update their issues. I know of a couple on this one that were resolved and never heard peep from them here.
This is well beyond what other auto marques are doing but standard fare for many non auto companies.
I still cannot believe someone would complain about a group that takes care of complainers. Then again in this new internet world where one complaint can go viral and really screw a company the companies have to go more than the extra mile.
In rereading the complaint I will make it more clear that the name change is because this is no longer just a “call” center which no one ever wants to call (no matter the product) and no one really expects a satisfactory resolution.
These are folks who actively seek out and are paid to FIX the issue and make the customer happy. These people will bring up customer satisfaction scores and reviews for GM which, in this new connected world, is not only important but critical in a product or service success.
It sounds like a good idea…and these people are here in the states, not overseas…that is Progress, in my mind. GM is trying to be successful in every way possible and I support every good thing it is doing
But Alex are these the same people that we have now that are on most GM web sites. They are polite and ask for you vin but can deliver little else.
Tricia and Michelle are two that are on many web sites and while they are trying to help they often are very limited in what they can do. I appreciate them but they can not solve anything even the most simple things first hand as they are limited on what info they can give.
I learned the GM e mail system a long time ago and have directed questions direct to the engineers. One Driveline engineer help solve my Turbo Upgrade issue directly and sent me info and even offered to work with my dealer if needed.
This is what GM needs more of.
I know this is better than it was but I really still question how well and reactive they will be.
I guess I should take a wait and see on this but as of yet the people of GM are willing to help but the management of GM seems to be holding them back at times.
I hope you are right that this may be a good thing but is it enough to get where they need to be.
I work with our [Customer Care Center] and know this side of the deal well. Our people are enabled to solve what ever issue there is globally. I pray GM empowers these folks the same way.
The more enabled they are and the less people involved the better the customer experience.
The real issue is still some GM dealers. I have two very good ones here but I see way too many people getting poor and low quality care and often GM is limited to what they can do about it. I have two dealers here that should be shut down but GM just can not go in and do it. They have to way for enough customer surveys just to apply some pressure.
This has been a very damages system and it will not be easily fixed when the government anti trust laws keep GM with one had tied behind their backs.
I agree Alex that this may be a good step but I just want to see them get there sooner than these small steps. I know GM does too.
Sorry it has been a bad week and I have had little patients for BS this week.
I agree with the importance of customer service and customer engagement in building a connection between the customers and the companies. Through customer service companies will know what are their customers concerns, issues, and needs and they can use that information to provide better services and products.