Have you ever walked the path your customer walks when engaging with your company? And when they tell you their experience are you listening?
How your customer experiences your company is far more important than the experience you think you are providing. So many companies streamline their processes because it’s what is best for them internally. They are looking for ways to improve efficiency thinking those improvements will positively impact customer service. It’s important to test those efficiencies to ensure there isn’t a negative impact to the customer experience.
Example: Company ABC sets up auto-attendants to answer customer service calls. With the increase in AI a lot of these bots are designed to deal with the customer’s issue quickly. The benefits to the company are ostensibly, quick resolution to customer issue and the need for fewer customer service representatives. The company probably identified the top issues their customer service department has been dealing with and then developed solution journeys for the automation to handle. This can be highly effective – as long as the customer is experiencing one of those issues exactly.
However, if the customer’s situation is more complex, or doesn’t fit the system parameters, there should be an option to send them to a live person who can listen to and help resolve the issue. Imagine the level of frustration the customer will have if they can’t get their point across to an automated attendant, and they can’t get to a human. The initial problem may have been relatively small. The handling of that problem could expand the level of dissatisfaction with your company and lead to the customer leaving you for your competition.
We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of our customer’s experience with our company. Something as simple as contact information being hard to locate on a company website can cause someone to seek an alternative source.
While it can be difficult to prepare for every possibility it is easy to listen when customers talk. If you are lucky enough to have a customer tell you about their bad experience, take it seriously. Consider what they are actually telling you. Think outside of your process because they are trying to tell you the process is broken. And empower your people to think outside the process. Imagine how frustrating it is for a customer who can’t get resolution to their issue and can’t get their point across to whoever they are dealing with. The most dangerous is if their only connection is a chatbot or auto attendant. These programs aren’t set up to deal with out of the norm comments or issues. No problem will be resolved this way.
The best way to ensure a positive customer experience is to walk their path and to listen to them when they try to tell you something. This is easier, and less costly than ignoring the customer journey.
©2022 Helbig Enterprises
