I heard two customer service anecdotes yesterday from a friend about separate companies who are both finding it challenging to maintain their market share. As you review these short anecdotes consider, from whatever perspective you choose if either response from a customer service representative is actually OK or not.
Situation 1 – “I am sure you were told that you would have that service within the hour,….. I know that you wanted it for something specific but I can’t help the weather can I?…… No you can’t get a refund, we aren’t based in the UK and therefore UK contractual law is not relevant”
Situation 2 – “I can’t make that decision and no no-one is around who can make that decision for you, call back later please”
Now, we all know that now is a time when customer acquisition would be nice but keeping hold of your customers is the basis for survival. In both of those situations the customer was lost to that company. At what cost? These types of couldn’t care less comments are not going to be isolated. How many careless calls are driving your customers away, simply because your staff don’t care.
It doesn’t really matter why the Agents said these things, the fact remains that they did and whilst it might be quite true in the second one that they are not empowered to make that decision, could it have been handled in a way that encouraged the customer and made them think twice about leaving? Of course it could.
What concerns me is that in our current economy we need everyone to step up and seek out ways to help, not to add to your customer’s problems or make feeble excuses. These replies are not about skill. They are all about motivation and care for your customers. At the moment response’s like this are killing your company.
Rather than telling you why we think this is being allowed to happen now and what to do about it, I want to open up the debate not just to Contact Centres but to Retailers and Hospitality – in fact anyone involved in customer service and to customers too by leaving you with our current favourite quote and to use this as a thought provoker about how to create a service culture within your business. How can you apply this principle according to Dr Seuss or how would you like your suppliers to apply this principle for your benefit?
“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
– Dr. Seuss
Caroline
Wowzer!
Caroline I’m just about to post about a Customer Service experience I had last night that links into this… however, this time its not so much about the response the advisor gave, but the decision businesses are making around attracting new customers VS keeping loyal customers!
It’s a very interesting debate, my advisor truly came across as if he wanted to help, but business policy wouldn’t allow it…
I think my comment relates to this train of thought… Well over a year ago I was working in a Call Centre (no names, no pack drill) and I was coaching and inbound sales person. The customer was irate over a certain issue (not important here what it was)and asked to speak to a manager who could make a decision. The CS Rep said, “One moment I’ll get him for you” and put the customer on hold. I expected the rep to call a manager over but what happened stunned me. The rep spent about a minute flipping through an in-house magazine! On returning to the call, he told the customer that no manager’s were avaiable and he couldn’t do anything at that moment so would they call back. I asked why a manager wasn’t called and was told, “They don’t come”. It was no more than a few minutes later when I experienced a similar situation with another rep. However, I intervened and called the manager over and suggested that he take the call. If looks could kill! I had put him on the spot and so he had no alternative but to deal with the issue to the customer’s satisfaction. After this, I congratulated him on what he had done but my encouragement was not received well. Sadly, I wasn’t there much longer, my contract was finishing, so I don’t know if he had changed his ways or whether the norm is for managers to continue to encourage a culture that ignores customer’s requests to speak to them.
Sadly that’s not untypicle – we are on a revolution to professionalise the industry – staff who have pride would never do that!