Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Companies "Setting Up" Customers to Believe in Good Service, Then Failing to Deliver
While most companies today offer what they call a “multichannel” experience, a few minutes of interaction with these companies on a complex problem reveals that it may be “multichannel,” but it’s not “omnichannel.” The channels operate in parallel to one another but never meet. This happens when companies create isolated communications “islands” between their contact center, their social media presence, their e-mail management solution, their warehouse, their brick-and-mortar stores and their back-office functions. Essentially, it boils down to the old adage about one hand not knowing what the other is doing.
Customers notice these lapses, particularly when they try to interact with more than one element of the company’s support infrastructure. In a recent blog post, Dr. Jodie Monger, writing for Customer Relationship Metrics, recounted a recent frustrating experience she had with a company.
“I placed an online order and scheduled an in-store pick-up, but when I arrived at the store I found the item to be out of stock,” she wrote. “And this item had been out of stock for more than six weeks! How can this be, knowing you all are connected to every aspect of your business? And furthermore you are connected to your customers (or say you are) through every possible channel too. It turns out that the item was not going to be available for several more months even though the ‘all-knowing’ call center agent took my order without mentioning any of this to me. I guess my agent was more preoccupied with getting me off the phone quickly than taking the time to ensure the product I wanted was available.”
There are two possibilities here. Either the contact center agent through which she placed the order simply didn’t care to check (which is a big problem); or the agent’s desktop didn’t allow her to check to see if the item is actually in stock (which is an even bigger problem). Perhaps the agent was a dedicated telephone agent and was limited to looking up knowledge related only to the phone channel. Whatever the case, the company in question (which boasts on its Web site of all the ways they’re delivering “superior” customer service through social customer service channels) had all Monger’s contact information, and this should have been sufficient to link her interactions from contact center to brick-and-mortar store, and throw up a red flag to initiate an outbound call for her to inform her that the item she ordered was not, in fact, in stock.
Customers today are being set up by companies to believe that they will receive a competent customer support experience, but many organizations aren’t backing up their promises with action by integrating their channels and building a true 360-degree view of the customer.
“In my case, had the agent spent a few extra moment checking availability for me before pushing me off the phone it would have saved me a bit of headache and the in-store clerk a complete description of how this should not have happened,” wrote Monger. “It’s okay to be out of something, but tell me before I drive to the store to pick it up. You have the means to prevent this customer pain, don’t you?”
Edited by Stefania Viscusi