Call Center or Service Desk? The secret is in Store Care

I’m often asked which is the differentiating element between a “Call Center” and a “Service Desk“, it often happens to confuse these two terms that are used indifferently to define a Service.

If I could invent a definition for the suite of services at Aton, I’d choose “Store Care.” Sure, it’s impactful in English, but if you try to translate it, it would sound like “Taking Care of the Store” sounds romantic, doesn’t it?

In reality it is anything but that, I would rather say: chaotic, demanding, challenging even risky.

Taking charge of what happens in a store” is the first concept that is transmitted to our SSA (Super Shop Assistant) during the first hours of training within the team.

When a client assigns us the service of support to their network of stores the requests are multiple, but recurrent. We talk about:

• Answer all calls, within 10′-20′-30′; 
• Answer all emails 
• Track all types of requests 
• Solve problems (which ones? All of them!) 
• Unlock urgent situations 
• Know the business processes 
• Know all suppliers 

… and I could go on and on but,how does our “Store Care” differ at this point?

Having complete control of what happens inside a store, even though we are physically far away, is our main Responsibility and Ticket control – the term by which a report is entered into an incident management tool – starts from the moment the call/email is received until complete resolution.

When is a ticket considered resolved? When every customer issue and every customer question is resolved, operations and everyday life are restored.
It becomes crucial throughout the “duration of a ticket” to give evidence to all involved actors (vendors) and spectators (the venue staff) of how the resolution of reports within a store is proceeding.
Having total control of a ticket means that at any time our SSAs are able to communicate to those who request it (sale assistants, HQ, area managers, Operations…), updates, progress states and changes concerning one or more reports.

Having total control over the stores allows IT at the client’s headquarters to focus on other projects, and to share day-to-day concerns with professionals.

Are you still there worrying about how to support your stores?

There is a Store Care available for you!