Customer Service And The Human Experience
By: Rosanne D'Ausilio, Ph.D.
Historically, customer service was delivered over the phone or in
person. Customers didn’t have many choices, and switching to competitors
was cumbersome. Today, these methods are but two of the many possible
touch points of entry for any given interaction. With all the options
the Internet brings, competition is literally a click away. If, as has
been reported, 65% of your business comes from current customers, then
in order to stay in business, you best focus on winning the satisfaction
and loyalty of those customers.
With continued attention on customer service, customer retention, and
lifetime value of the customer, it is no surprise that contact center
operations continue to increase in importance as the primary hub of a
customer’s experience. The contact center is still the most common way
that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports
92% of all contact is through the center.
While much attention has been focused on the technology and benefits of
providing multiple channels for customer contact, little consideration
has been directed to handling the human part of the equation—training
Customer and Technical Service Representatives to field more than just
telephone communications. With the explosion of e-commerce, the need to
reinforce keeping the human element in the equation is paramount.
Certainly now more than ever before in history, customer-centric service
is a necessity.
Twenty five years from now customers will still be human beings, still
be driven by desires and needs. Virtual environments do not create
virtual customers. Except for the simplest transactions, some customers
still need to be connected with and nurtured by a live person.
Amazon.com has learned this. They employ hundreds of traditional
customer service representatives using phone lines to help customers
with questions that cannot be dealt with online.
With the ability to handle simple transactions available by using
sophisticated, self-service technology, customer calls, faxes, and/or
e-mails are more complex, more complicated, sometime even escalated,
heightening stress levels.
At the same time, research has identified the Customer Service and
Technical Representative as one of the ten most stressful jobs in
America today, with job stress costing employers an estimated $300+
billion yearly in absenteeism, lowered productivity, rising health
insurance costs and other medical expenses (up from $200 + billion just
ten years ago.) A recent NIOSH study reported that 50% of employees view
job stress as a major problem in their lives--double from a decade ago.
Lines of demarcation have blurred and change is rampant in today’s
center. Why? Because of our cell phones, voice mail, faxback, PDA’s, and
e-mail. We are now more available and accessible than ever before. The
lines are no longer clear as to where our jobs or projects begin and
end—they can follow us home again and again.
In today’s competitive marketplace there is little difference between
products and services. What makes the difference--what distinguishes one
company from another--is its relationship with the customer. Who has the
awesome responsibility for representing themselves, their companies,
perhaps their industry in general? Front line representatives.
The ability of a company to provide human-to-human connections--back and
forth live communication--continues to be critically important. The fact
is voice is the most natural and powerful human interface, real time or
otherwise. That isn’t going to change any time soon. To the customer,
people are inseparable from the services they provide. Actually, the
person on the other end of the phone is the company. It is no wonder,
then, that companies with superior people management, invest heavily in
training and retraining, reinforcing the human element.
Yet customers still leave. The latest statistics on why are:
• 45% because of poor service
• 20% because of lack of attention.
This means that 65% of your customers leave because of something your
front line is, or is not, doing.
• 15% for a better product
• 15% for a cheaper product and
• 5% other
This is the good and the bad news. It’s bad news because that’s a high
percentage. On the other hand, it’s good news because there is something
you can do about it—it resides on the human side.
It is agreed that people, process, and ‘state of the art’ technology are
what make companies work. For me, the people process is most important.
After all, it’s the people who truly make the difference.
Never lose sight of the fact that we are human beings, not merely ‘human
doings.’ The fact is 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven
by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. Technology is
meant to enable human endeavors, not to disable them.
Extraordinary service or lack thereof, separates the good from the great
companies. As more and more organizations are turning to the contact
center as a strategic player in the competitive landscape, it is in the
throes of re-inventing itself to step up to the plate and become the
heart of a company's customer facing operations.
Empathetic Responsiveness
The ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and see their
point of view—not agree with them, not make them right and your company
wrong—but hear what they are saying. After all, basic needs of all of us
are to be heard and treated with dignity and respect.
I think of a call as an ABC process. ‘A’ represents the customer
presenting their question, request, complaint or problem. ‘C’ is the
ultimate resolution. Most times ‘B’ is either skipped or left
out—because of metrics, calls in queue, or simply because you know the
answer before the customer is even finished speaking. ‘B’ is where the
agent acknowledges what they hear—be it upset, anger, frustration, or
fear. Or, a simple ‘thank you for taking the time to call and bring this
to our attention.’ After all, if a customer calls in to complain, you
have the opportunity/challenge to turn them around. If they don’t call,
and only complain to other people, you have no opportunity. Does going
through ‘B’ take longer? Not at all. It allows you to move the customer
to a more productive interaction and close the call. I’ve heard many
customers repeat their opening paragraph (A) over and over, while at the
same time the agent is trying to get them to resolution (C). Red alert!
Red alert! Acknowledge what is behind the words and you will move them
quickly to ‘C.’ I believe you can’t go from A to C without going through
B.
If all customers wanted just the facts (and some do), they could
ascertain the information online. Most customers (people) want the human
interaction, someone to hear them, someone to care. A simple, “I’m so
sorry that was your experience. My name is Rosanne and I’m going to do
my best to help you right here and now.”
Self Service
When asked the question in a recent study, “What is the biggest barrier
your company encounters to self-service effectiveness?” only 14% of the
customers replied they don’t know about it.’ This means that the 86% who
do know about it and attempt to use it (1) find it too hard to navigate,
(2) can’t find the answers, and/or (3) don’t trust the system or the
answers they do find.
Research shows that customers prefer to deal with companies who are the
most consistently accessible. When customers experience a level of
service from email and chat support, for instance, that equals or
exceeds voice support, then and only then will they gladly migrate to
those channels to resolve their problems and inquiries.
To increase customers’ satisfaction, be sure to:
1) Phone: Have a ‘zero out’ option on your system
2) Website: Have your phone number or a button to speak with a human
3) E-mail: Rephrase the issue in the opening paragraph.
Purchasing Process
In an interview with Delia Passi Smalter, the former publisher of
Working Woman and Working Mother magazines, we found very interesting
statistics regarding female demographics (Incentive Magazine, 2003). It
seems that women are making over 85% of consumer purchases and
influencing more than 95% of total goods and services. Smalter
distinguishes the purchasing process women and men go through. The
biggest one, she says, is that women need to feel more of a connection
to the TSR; they need to trust the corporation and the brand. Price
becomes secondary. Women take in a lot of information, including
recommendations from friends and family, company and brand reputation,
feelings about her contact person, and how the brand will impact her
life. Not so for men. Men take a systematic approach, allowing outside
influence to some degree, but mostly they are focused on price.
One of the most influential documents in the world, the U.S.
Constitution, begins with "We, the people..." Yes, ‘we the people’ are
what makes the difference.
About the Author: ROSANNE D'AUSILIO, Ph.D., industrial psychologist,
President of Human Technologies Global, Inc., specializes in human
performance management for contact centers, providing needs analyses,
instructional design, and customized, live, world class customer service
skills trainings. Also offered: agent/facilitator certification through
Purdue University’s Center for Customer Driven Quality. Known as 'the
practical champion of the human, she authors the best-sellers, Wake Up
Your Call Center: Humanize Your Interaction Hub, 4th edition (hot off
the press), and Customer Service and The Human Experience and soon to be
released, Lay Your Cards on the Table: 52 Ways to Stack You Personal
Deck.. Reach her at Rosanne@human-technologies.com , sign up for her
complimentary monthly e-newsletter in its 7th year, and check out her
new virtual store. Sign up for her newest endeavor Tips at http://www.HumanTechTips.com.
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http://www.human-technologies.com.
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