Call Center Management Featured Article
Having a Plan for When the Customer Relationship Goes South
We’re all familiar with the blind spots in our cars: those points just beyond the edges of our bumpers where our vision starts and the potential for deadly collisions start. In business, there are blind spots as well…they may not put anyone in danger of mortal injury, but they can be destructive all the same. Often, they have to do with customer relationships and the lack of visibility many companies have into previous interactions.
To most contact centers today, customers aren’t customers, they are a series of inbound communications that request something: a solution to a problem, an answer to a question, or remedial action on a mistake. This is the wrong approach: a customer is a human being whose relationship with a company should be one holistic experience, and everyone who has contact with customers should have this information instantly and readily available. By approaching customers as simply transaction numbers or trouble tickets, companies run the risk of driving loyal customers away and failing to capture potential new lifelong customers.
The following scenario is probably familiar to most people: you receive an erroneous bill from a company (perhaps a double bill or a bill for a service you don’t receive). You call the company and it takes eons to straighten out. Perhaps you have taken the time to scan a cancelled check or an invoice in order to prove that you are right. The company promises to fix the problem, but the following month, you receive the same erroneous bill. There are two ways the next phone call could go:
Scenario A: When the customer calls, the agent takes a moment to glance over any previous interactions. Armed with the knowledge of why the customer is calling, the agent can apologize profusely – and be forgiving of the customer’s understandably huffy tone -- and promise that the matter will be handled, and follow through. In this scenario, the relationship will probably be saved.
Scenario B: The agent picks up the call blind, listens to the customer’s problem and writes him or her off as a complainer. The customer must then explain and prove the error all over again, and the agent takes offense at the customer’s aggravated tone, perhaps even suggesting that the customer “calm down.” In this scenario, the customer hangs up the phone, screams, and informs all of his or her friends to avoid the company.
Customer consultant Micah Solomon, writing for Forbes, says what separates good customer service providers from bad is the quality of the customer relationship recovery process, or having a backup plan when things go wrong.
“It’s crucial that you have a world-class customer service recovery process in place for when things go south,” Solomon wrote. “It doesn’t work to wing it every time a customer is irritated, frustrated, or flat-out furious. No matter how superb your product or service is, every company needs a service recovery process with the goal of restoring (or even enhancing) customer satisfaction, as well as reducing the possibility of a recurrence.”
For starters, prevention of blind spots is critical: if your help desk or call center isn’t working on a desktop that has easy and fast access to overviews of the customer relationship, you are doomed to be a “Scenario B” company. While you may not be able to knock the ball out of the park every time, if you have a backup plan specifically designed to save the customer relationship, you’ll ensure you’re not actively driving customers away.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi