Are we really
taking customer service seriously?
Nearly all businesspeople will agree that with fewer and fewer products
or services being truly unique, the customer service experience has become
the sole differentiator for the vast majority of companies. In other
words, the quality of your customer service is what will give you a competitive
advantage.
But the reality for most customers is that the quality of the customer
service they receive is very poor. So poor, in fact, that it drives them
away from their service providers and into the arms of their provider's
competitors.
Half of the consumers surveyed in Britain and the United States said
poor customer service was the reason they switched service providers according
to a study by Accenture. Nineteen percent of shoppers said they had patronized
a different store in the past year, 18% of all gas, electricity and water
customers said they had switched suppliers in the last 12 months, 13%
of bank customers changed banks and 13% of phone users switched Telcos
all because of poor service. On average, for any given industry, 10% of
all customers said they had changed their supplier because of poor customer
service.
More and more companies are channelling customer contact through call
centres but most customers believe this is making customer service worse,
not better. In the Accenture study, 54% of customers said dealing with
a call centre was like, “driving in slow city traffic that also required
them to take many alternative routes to reach their destination.”
Eighty-two per cent of customers using contact centres complained about
being kept on hold too long. In fact, the Accenture study revealed that
the average British consumer spends nearly 6 minutes on hold when contacting
a call centre and they speak to 2.7 service representatives while trying
to get the help they need. Seventy-seven percent said they had to repeat
the same information over and over again.
Even when they do get through to the 'right' person, most customers
end up disappointed. Seventy percent of customers said they did not get
the help they sought and 35% said the agent they talked to lacked the
product or service knowledge to help them. A further 20% said the technology
the company used actually delayed or prevented them from getting the service
they sought.
British customers using contact centres complained about slow service
(47%), inflexible service (49%), lack of personalized solutions (43%),
impersonal treatment (42%), lack of service due to computer systems being
down (42%), company representatives asking too many personal questions
35%), and companies creating too much paperwork 14%). To add insult to
injury, 51% said that when they did get through to a customer service
representative, the agent tried to sell them another product or service.
The Internet, another channel companies are encouraging customers to
use to get the service they seek, is not much better. Eighty-five percent
of consumer financial sites are failing to provide good levels of customer
service according to a study by Forrester Research. The study showed that
lack of contextual help is the biggest failing with 75% of sites not providing
adequate task-related help and easy access to assistance from a person
in real time. Consistency was another problem with over 60% of sites using
different symbols, colours, positions and instructions for navigational
aids within the same site.
But perhaps what is most disturbing is that when things go wrong, companies
fail abysmally to satisfy their unhappy customers.
It is an accepted fact that customers who have a problem with a company
and have that problem resolved to their satisfaction are more loyal than
customers who never had a problem.
It is an accepted fact that the longer it takes to resolve the customer's
problem and the more people they have to talk to to get it resolved, the
more dissatisfied customers are likely to be at the conclusion.
Failing to handling a customer complaint to the customer's satisfaction
can be very expensive. If you think of a customer who has complained recently,
found out what they spent with your company every year and then multiplied
that by 15 years (the customer's lifetime), you would understand how much
business you would lose if you did not resolve their complaint to their
satisfaction. If you then factored in the effect of the unhappy complainant
telling nine other people about their bad experience (by calculating what
business you would not get if each of those nine might have spent even
just half as much as your complainant over only 10 years) you will see
there is a lot of money at stake.
Recent research out of Britain shows just how poorly we are handling
customer complaints. According to the latest Customer care Alliance study,
last year 77% of British consumers had a problem with at least one product
or service they consumed. Forty-three percent said the product or service
did not meet their expectations, 36% experienced poor product or service
quality, 21% experienced delivery problems and 18% complained of misleading
information.
Sixty-four percent of customers were extremely or very upset over their
most serious problem. Fiftythree percent said they had lost time as a
result of the problem and 44% said they had lost money.
Eighty-three percent of these customers complained to the organisation
responsible and 53% also told their friends about their problem. Thirty
percent also decided never to do business with that supplier again. Interestingly,
35% of those who did not complain said they didn't think there was any
point complaining because nothing was likely to be done to solve their
problem.
It seems these customers are speaking from experience because 90% of
the customers who did complain said they were unhappy with the way their
problem was handled.
It took on average 4.5 contacts with a company to resolve a problem.
Only 10% of the problems were resolved in one day, 20% took more than
30 days and 37% of customers said their problem had still not been resolved.
One-third said they got nothing as a result of contacting the company.
Even when customers wanted non-financial remedies they were disappointed.
Seventy-one percent of customers were not given an apology, although 47%
had expected one. Seventy-eight percent were not given an explanation
about what had gone wrong although 44% wanted one. Thirtytwo percent of
customers wanted an assurance the problem would not be repeated but only
6% got one. Not surprisingly, satisfaction with the way the problem was
resolved correlated highly with overall customer satisfaction, customer
loyalty and what customers said about the company.
Lest we feel complacent, research in Canada, the USA, Australia and
New Zealand says we are all performing at about the same level as the
British when it comes to handling customer complaints.
So what kind of service do people want and how should we respond when
things go wrong?
According to a study of 1000 consumers in the USA by IBM, today's consumers
are making it clear they want friendly, knowledgeable, fast and personalized
service. They want products that are easy to find and use. They want to
interact with technology that recognizes them and rewards them for their
loyalty. It will come as a surprise to many managers that all this is
even more important to consumers than low prices! And as we have seen,
if customers do not get this experience, they are quite prepared to take
their business elsewhere.
As companies try to build more and more features into products such
as telephones, satellite TV, and home appliances, these products are becoming
more and more complex. Consequently, customers need more assistance in
learning how to use, and therefore get full value from, these products.
Similarly, as more companies are turning to technology as a way of interacting
with their customers, customers need more education about how to make
the most of the technology (e.g. “Did you know that by pressing 7 at any
time, you can …?”). Taking the time to educate your customers will reduce
their frustrations and increase the quality of the customer service experience.
By the same token, 'self service' has got to add value to the customer
and not just save money for the service provider if the customer is going
to be satisfied. Most 'self service', such as you get at petrol stations,
is really no service at all. It is simply DIY dressed up in corporate-speak.
If you were a do-it-yourself person and built an addition on your home,
when your friends admired your work I doubt you would say, “Yes, I hired
my local builder and took the self-service option.” Using technology such
as telephone banking and the Internet must make it easier, faster and
more effective for the customer if it is going to be seen as a service
enhancer.
When things go wrong, customers want to be able to get quickly to someone
who can help them. They want their problem resolved quickly and they would
like an apology, an explanation about what went wrong and an assurance
that steps will be taken to try to prevent the problem from recurring.
So it seems that lack of knowledge about what the customer wants is
not the obstacle to delivering outstanding customer service. Nor is giving
the customer what they want difficult to do. We just need to make giving
the customer the kind of experience they are looking for a priority.
In other words, we have to take customer service seriously.
How can we say we are taking customer service seriously when, although
we know it is very important to have loyal customers, we allow poor customer
service to drive customers way in droves?
How can we say we are taking customer service seriously when the way
customer problems are handled affects customer satisfaction, customer
loyalty and the brand and yet we allow 90% of all customers who complain
to go away unhappy?
How can we say we are taking customer service seriously when we are
doing so little about it that 67% of all British consumers surveyed said
that customer service had not improved in the past five years?
And what will have to happen for us to really take customer service
seriously?
|
