Sometimes, the customer call service departments that are intended to fix issues end up making them far worse.
These are some examples and advice on staying off this list and avoiding lousy service.
1. Lack of Accountability
Many bad customer call service experiences start with a business that is contented to take the money from a transaction but refuses to take responsibility when something goes wrong.
Amazon Won’t Refund a Ridiculous Delivery Fee
Amazon relied on being technically correct in the $7,000 toilet paper issue (i.e., a third-party seller had assessed the huge delivery charge) to escape any blame until under pressure from negative publicity.
Get In Charge:
- Focus on the viewpoint of the consumer. They shouldn’t have to be concerned with the behind-the-scenes economic dealings. You are (at least morally) accountable for their experience if you sell them something.
- Detect outliers by using systems. Use technology to identify out-of-bounds situations instead of waiting for a client to report them.
- Teach your team how to express regret. Shifting the blame entirely does not resolve the problem and creates a wrong impression in the customer’s mind.
2. Unwillingness to Reply
One of the most frequent reasons for low customer call service satisfaction rates is slow reaction times. As time passes, even the tiniest problems can grow into significant issues.
Long Waiting Time
QANTAS, an airline based in Australia, kept a man waiting for 15 hours. Unfortunately, that’s 20 minutes longer than the flight he was phoning about from Adelaide to NYC. Anyone who has dealt with automated phone systems is likely to believe the consumer, notwithstanding QANTAS’ denials.
Improve Service Efficiency
Try living the customer call service experience for a day to understand it from their perspective. The rough edges will be easier to see.
3. Lack of Adaptability
A typical example of poor customer service call centers occurs when policies are faithfully followed, even when they are absurd in a given situation. This problem is more prevalent when dealing with larger businesses.
The Microwave Has Major Issues
Whirlpool allegedly decided that a microwave that required five repairs in six months wasn’t faulty enough to warrant a replacement. They delayed the procedure until they were (again) publicly shamed into taking action.
Reach Full Stretch
- Follow Captain Barbossa’s advice and structure your regulations more like recommendations than strict rules.
- Give your frontline team the power to take the necessary action and support them in your choices.
4. Misleading Designs
Before the call center support services personnel are involved, some of the worst customer call service experiences occur. The temptation to coerce customers into taking actions they might not otherwise take can exist when product managers and designers are trying to growth-hack their way to fulfilling KPIs.
Dark Design of LinkedIn
The business network LinkedIn is renowned for pushing the limits of dark design motifs. They were inventoried a few years ago by Dan Schlosser. One such design caused thousands of consumers to get a barrage of “Join LinkedIn” emails that appeared to have been sent by their friends.
Keep It Light-Hearted
- Make sure company decisions reflect your basic principles. Test your designs against that criterion if you profess to be customer-centric. Your values aren’t fundamental if they don’t alter at all.
- Make sure your product copy explains what will happen in detail and accurately. Review it with your support staff; they can anticipate some potential areas of consumer uncertainty.
5. Hiding People
It is a fantastic pleasure to call on a capable, considerate individual when you need assistance. Naturally, reality frequently resembles chasing Ron Swanson’s swivel chair more. It’s so frequent that people make it difficult to speak with someone that services like GetHuman exist to help users obtain human support.
Search and Rescue
The cry for assistance from the irate Telstra client truly drives home the point. Only being a Level 8 Inspector is insufficient justification for phone contact with a live individual. Therefore, the employee wasn’t able to resolve the issue.
Reach Out:
- Spend money on call center support services. If you value your clients’ calls, you should pay someone to take them with some of your earnings.
- Construct improved self-service resources. Many folks are content not to call if they can quickly get the solution online.
- Enhance your call center support services channels to guide clients in the right direction for assistance.
6. Making Unwanted Calls
The prior “hiding persons” category of subpar service is the opposite of this. It’s sometimes frustrating that customers must call a company’s customer service department to cancel or change their account when everything else can be done online.
Frustrating Process
Tarek Khalil tweeted about his efforts to deactivate his Baremetrics account. Weirdly, joining is always much more straightforward than leaving, even though the corporation justified why things had to be done this way.
While the client waits, Australian satirists at The Chaser offer to handle the time-consuming task of canceling your subscription to Rupert Murdoch’s publications.
Don’t Just Call It In:
- Respect the time and effort of your consumers. Allow people to cancel online if they can join up.
- Allow individuals to cancel immediately, but give them a window of opportunity in which an explanation or a special offer can reengage them where they left off.
7. Disrespectful Speech
Being in customer call service may require you to put up with a lot of unfavorable conduct from irate clients while being polite. However, there are situations when the call center support services representative sets the tone.
Any Client, by Any Other Name
Comcast was obliged to issue an apology when a team member changed a customer’s account name from Ricardo Brown to “A**Hole Brown” (albeit that was probably the fastest Comcast has ever altered a customer’s information).
Reducing Rudeness
- So your customer call service representatives have enough emotional stamina to make thoughtful, compassionate decisions and treat them well.
- Don’t let your team’s mistreatment of your clients go unpunished.
- Before they reach this point, use quality assurance procedures to find any potential training or attitude problems.
8. Passive Listening
Receiving client instructions and carrying them out exactly as requested without exercising independent judgment or taking the customer’s intent into account is a unique service failure. Another example of being “technically right” (the best one).
Well, It Definitely Wins
There is some incredible collection of cake decorations, where the decorator appears to have taken things a little too literally. Like when the customer was asked what to put on her cake and she said “nothing”. The employee did write the word “Nothing” on her cake.
Better Reading Advice:
- Instead of hurrying to finish the task, give your team time to clarify any issues they may have.
- Teach your agents to read critically.
- Encourage the use of common sense.
9. Reluctance to Escalation
Everyone occasionally makes errors, gets misunderstood, or disappoints someone. But it’s preferable to avoid getting hung up on problems and making them worse.
Hotel Insanity
When an Australian motel saw an internet review they disagreed with, they charged the customer an additional $50 rather than trying to understand and correct it. This inevitably led to media coverage, a refund, and much more harm to the company’s reputation than the first review.
Dig Up:
- Do not reply right away if you are angry. Pause for a second and breathe.
- Make a strategy for handling negative feedback, then refer to it when it gets tricky.
Most Subpar Services Are Unexceptional
If you are reading this, likely, your customer call service is not so appalling that it makes local news. But it doesn’t take a severe mistake to lose business. If minor service irritants are allowed to persist, they will turn off many otherwise content customers. Pay attention to all the subtle cues that arise when anything is off.
Keep an eye on your customer call service satisfaction scores, response times, and online mentions. Before they become significant issues, simple course changes are significantly more affordable and efficient.
Consider using our services if you’re starting with your customer call service care staff or if it’s been a while since you looked beyond the current situation.
By doing this, you’ll position yourself and your team to provide the reliable, high-quality service that appears on the balance sheet of your business rather than Twitter’s trending page.
