General Motors wants the customer to be the focal point of its business model – so much so that the venerable automaker is changing the name of its call centers to Customer Engagement Centers.
GM’s new Customer Engagement Centers are designed to improve the overall customer experience by reaching out to new owners to answer questions and resolve issues. GM hopes to funnel data collected at the Centers to its designers and engineers to capture the voice of the customer and for further improvements in vehicle programs.
About 300 advisers will be located at GM’s Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. The Customer Engagement Centers are part of the company’s broader plan for information technology.
Susan Waun, a member of GM’s Global Communications team, told Loyalty 360 that the name change to Customer Engagement Centers reflects the company’s goal to provide the best overall customer experience in the industry.
“We are taking a more proactive approach with our customers on their terms,” Waun said. “GM is transforming into a customer-centric company. To create a positive and lasting impact on customers and ultimately drive loyalty, relationships and support needs to extend beyond the point of sale. We consider every contact with our customers as a huge opportunity.”
In the Customer Engagement Centers, Waun said, “when a customer contacts us for assistance, we're eliminating the escalation process where a customer might be passed to another representative. Instead, our customers will communicate with well-trained advisers who are enabled to make decisions.”
Another difference between the former call centers and the new Customer Engagement Centers is GM’s proactive social media team, which is heavily involved in Facebook, Twitter, and popular online vehicle forums.
“These are specially trained advisers monitoring the web and reaching out to customers to offer assistance,” Waun said. “We interact and assist our customers using the type of communication channels they prefer, including online chats, social media forums, email, and phone. We believe we are leading the industry with our social media team, which handles more than 9,000 unique interactions per month.”
A transition to fast, competent, and proactive engagement with customers goes “above and beyond a simple name change,” Waun said. “This is about providing an industry-leading overall experience to our customers as we practice with our new infotainment systems: Chevrolet MyLink, Buick and GMC's IntelliLink and the Cadillac CUE. We just expanded our Connected Customer Specialist team. The main job of these 50 specialists is to train tech savvy GM dealership employees so they can help customers to get the most out of their state-of-the-art infotainment systems.”