Oh, Customer Service!
Since being in lockdown my online shopping habits have increased — I thought I was an avid online shopper before my shopping habits have definitely soared since being home. As such I have had to contact brands’ customer services departments more so than ever before. Some of them have been surprisingly great — American Express consistently provides great service but unfortunately, a vast majority have been poor.
Some firms for some reason consistently get it right that I wonder why can’t others copy their competitors and also offer great service. Repeatedly it has been shown great service leads to increased revenue but it seems not everyone either knows how or believes in this equation.
There is one brand in particular that owes me an Amazon voucher and a month later I am still waiting to understand the outcome of my ticket. Another brand only responds after multiple follow up emails. Another brand failed to read my message properly and ended up copying and pasting a generic message. I have many other examples but I guess what I am trying to imply here is that on average my interactions with customer service departments falls more on the poor side and quite frankly it makes me sad. In COVID times where unfortunately economies are shrinking customer service with your existing customers is important more than ever before.
Below I have listed some pointers but over the next few weeks, I will be continuing to chronicle my experiences — maybe with some brand identification for greater context.
I reached out to Brand A as I wanted clarification around their terms of service. I can appreciate a customer care agent may not know the ins and outs of the legal aspects of my question but what I was surprised to be met with silence. 7 days later I had to follow up and I was met with an answer that suggested the person at the other end of the email wasn’t entirely sure. So how could this scenario have been handled better?
Don’t ignore it. Please seek to find the answer and if you cannot get the answer to the customer within your SLA timeframe please respond to the customer to let them know their query is being looked into and you will respond back in due course. I can hear the screams of Customer Care execs saying time and volume doesn’t always allow for individual follow-ups and I hear you I really do, but I am going to argue now more than ever poor levels of service can no longer cut it. Even if you do not have sophisticated customer care software (although you should and I can help with that — shameless plug) good old fashioned calendar invites work just fine.
I can also hear customer care agents alerting me to the poor conditions and low morale most of them possess and going the extra mile isn’t always the most urgent thing on their mind. But I would argue this means the organization you work for doesn’t have a customer-centric focus. The Container Store in the US has customer care embedded within every single member of staff and therefore their customer care agents will take whatever time is needed to help with a customers enquiry.
I reached out to Brand B and the agent copied and pasted a response which wasn’t relevant to my original query. I know this sounds so simple but we have to ensure agents read messages for context. I sympathise that some agents work against very tight deadlines and speed is paramount but I think this is where firms need to move away from SLA metrics being the most important marker of customer care success. Yes, customers want to be responded too quickly however not at the expense of their query not being answered properly.
Working in customer care isn’t necessarily easy — you are dealing more often than not with unhappy customers, but that is where the processes, the tools and people all need to be aligned with a customer-first approach to enhance the interactions with your brand.
There is so much more to unpack but next week I will discuss the positive interactions I have had and why I deemed those encounters to be positive.
Until next time, Theresa
