Why brands need to lean into their humanity
When a brand treats you poorly what is your typical reaction? Do you vent at the brand? Do you vent to friends? Do you jump on social media? Or do you do a combination of the above plus more?
All brands at some point will get it wrong — brands are still run by human beings at the end of the day. However what I see all too often are corporations forgetting their human aspect when they have a customer service mishap and then doing nothing or even worse offer a robotic impersonal apology.
To illustrate this point I am going to use an incident my cousin had with PayPal to really drum home the point how companies across the board, big and small are failing their customers.
My cousin’s PayPal account was compromised and naturally she reached out to them or tried to. When doing so she was passed around multiple departments, sent to the self serve page to finally land at the chat option to then get cut off to start the conversation again. When she was finally able to report the incident to PayPal it took them a month to respond and in between that time, countless emails to their customer service email went unanswered. By all means this isn’t an attack on PayPal but rather my viewpoint on how this entire incident could have been handled better.
So what do I suggest PayPal could have done differently?
Firstly make getting in contact with your brand’s CX team super easy. I understand brands want to self — serve, I really do, I am a staunch advocate for it when it is executed well. However I do find PayPal’s self serve portion of the site painstakingly annoying.
Provide time frames for your customer. Let the customer know how long the issue usually takes to be resolved. The reason I suggest this is if a customer knows a response may take 6 weeks it prevents them having to reach out to ask for an update as you have given some guidance of when they should hear back.
However on the above point try to communicate time frames that you know are slightly elongated. If it typically takes 3 weeks to resolve an issue and you communicate 6 weeks, guess what? As a customer I am going to feel you have completed the task earlier than expected when really that was always the time frame. Under promise, over deliver always!!
Now if for whatever reason you are not going to meet the deadline, please proactively reach out to the customer. Is this time consuming? Hell yes! But the burden shouldn’t be placed on the customer to follow up on their request when the brand is the one who hasn’t adhered to their own timelines.
I am on the fence with chat. I get it, I think it is useful. I do not have time during my working day to call brands so chat is amazing for this. Where chat falls short, if for whatever reason I get cut off I have to start the conversation all over again. Please use a chat service that when I return the conversation is still there at the least.
And last but not least, PayPal communicated a month later with no interaction in between and apologised at the end of the email. I get what they tried to do but starting an email without acknowledging your fault is an absolute no! Apologise, make it sincere and be honest. Far too often I see emails with the same robotic apology and it doesn’t work anymore. Consumers have choice and are not obliged to use your service, so when your brand messes up, own it! Let the customer know you missed the mark. This is how I would have rephrased PayPal’s email: “We missed the mark, a month to hear back from us is unacceptable and not how we like to do things over here! We understand your frustration and for that we are sorry!” If you can offer something to the customer that is equally beneficial to you, do that also! But emails that go something like this “I am sorry for any inconvenience caused” are boringly bad and show you lack human empathy.
Let me know your thoughts. Let me know when a brand has amazed you in both a negative and positive way below.
Until next time. Theresa
