Which Road Is YOUR Customer Experience On ?

Ian Moyse, Sales Director at Natterbox takes us on a journey through the pitfalls of unresponsive customer service

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Published: September 4, 2018

Ian Taylor Editor

Ian Taylor

Who would have thought that in 2018, with all the technological evolutions we have already lived through in the past 10-15 years, from Cloud Computing, Smartphones, Social Media, Drones, Big Data, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet Of Things (IoT) that customer experience could still be slow, put work on the customers shoulders and often let customers down?

Take a recent experience of my own involving British Gas, whereupon being let down on a maintenance agreement and requesting to lodge a complaint, I entered into their process to be told the complaints team would get back to me within 8, yes 8 weeks! So, a customer who is clearly not satisfied and is requesting it to be dealt with is then put into an 8 week delay cycle. How does that address their complaint? Give them confidence that you care as a company for their business.

Ian Moyse Natterbox Customer ExperienceMy immediate thoughts were 1 of 3 things; either they were so inundated with complaints that this was the backlog; they simply didn’t care about that department so understaffed it and hence a similar effect; or the biggie being that they hoped this would diffuse a portion of clients who would either forget to re-engage, or by the time it came around would not care or forget about its details. None of which are acceptable approaches.

When raising complaints, the common average I get from speaking to others is that you are informed via email or web response that your enquiry will be dealt with in 10 to 14 days. Is it no wonder that many resort to the phone to request resolution?

It is easy for a company to fob you off electronically, to defer, delay or perhaps hope your complaint goes away. If, like me, when you get these messages you also deliberate on whether they will come back to you (I always now create a diary event with the details to ensure it prompts me when they have missed their SLA and I should be chasing – usually with a phone call as they have now let me down again!).

Is it too much to ask that once I am a ‘let down’ customer, a complainer, that I get to engage and have it at least considered, if not resolved quickly? Are businesses that short-staffed or that plagued with complaints that they need this buffer? Isn’t a complaining customer one you need to deal with quickly to diffuse and stop the spread? The longer it goes on the harder it gets to recover and the more effort and cost to your business:

  • ‘33% of customers say they’ll consider switching companies after just a single instance of poor service.’ – (Source : American Express Customer Service Barometer 2017)
  • ‘For every customer who complains, there are 26 customers who don’t say anything.’ – (Source : Lee Resources International)
  • ‘Customers tell an average of 15 people about a poor service experience, versus the 11 people they’ll tell about a good experience.’ – (Source : American Express Customer Service Barometer 2017)
  • ‘82% of customers have left a company because of a bad customer service experience.’ – (Source : Rightnow)

Customer churn is costly and yet customers who have a problem and find its handling is professional and fast, often come back and increase spend, knowing with confidence they can trust this provider and are thus happy to put more into that bucket.

Too often such customer issues receive a response too slowly, if at all. They would benefit from the personal touch. An email complaint will often be dealt with on email only, which if it works and resolves quickly can be okay, but consider offering a phone call on which to actually talk. It is easy for the customer’s true demeanour to be misconstrued on email, and you do not get the tonality and feel for the customer (nor they you) over electronic means. Arranging a time to actually ‘speak’ makes it a real engagement, gets the person engaging with a ‘real’ person, your agent, and often diffuses the situation far quicker and makes the customer feel loved that they got ‘real’ attention.

Natterbox Ian Moyse customers leave companyPoor service and the feeling of a business that does not care are the top reasons for churning customers. Something in your own control, not something caused by competitors.

  • ‘Customers who cancelled because of price are more likely to come back than those who left because of poor service’ – (Source : Georgia State University Study)
  • ‘70% of customers leave a company because of poor service, which is usually attributed to a salesperson’ – (Source : Peppers & Rogers Group)
  • ‘67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue was resolved at the first engagement.’ – (Source – thinkJar Survey)

Businesses need to invest in technology that enables them to have more time to ‘speak’ to clients, to engage with them and make that human touch still real.

Natterbox Ian Moyse Customer experience

We hear all the time of wonderous new technology such as AI, VR, Chatbots and the like, that take us further from customers, pushing customers to self-serve and to not engaging with us as a personal brand, but a faceless automaton. In shops we are forced to self-serve, to in effect work for the shop in scanning our own goods, paying and packing without any payback, the promise being faster service. All are positioned as aiding the customer, not a mention of the cost savings in labour to the retailer.

Yet when something does not work, when a customer feels they need help (rightly or wrongly) the customer perception of service is what is real to that individual, and if here you cut corners and let them down, they will churn and pass that ill feeling onto others to influence their possible churn or not coming to you in the 1st place.

We as customers are more fickle than ever before. Loyalty quickly wains anyway when new world approaches and entrants are on offer – ask Blockbuster, Toys R’ Us, Taxi Drivers fighting UBER. I could go on. Add to this dissatisfaction in service and it can only stimulate a customer’s receptiveness to change and looking around.

Customers today want and expect service and, when needed, personal service and engagement with a human. Have you ever tried phoning your own company to find out the process as a customer? Maybe you should do your own ‘Mystery Shop’?

  • ‘45% of customers withdrew their negative evaluation of a company in light of an apology, whereas only 23% of customers withdrew their negative evaluation in return for compensation’ – (Source : Nottingham School of Economics)

Natterbox Ian Moyes customer experience

Find out now how your customer’s journey is. Is it smooth, fast to get to the destination and without traffic jams, diversions and frustration? Or do you make them want to turn back to take a different route and regret ever setting out on this journey?

Guest Blog by Ian Moyse, Sales Director at Natterbox

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