Does Culture Affect the Customer Experience?

The idea of great customer service means different things to different people. One individual on the phone may find any kind of wait time unacceptable, while the next individual may accept it as part of the process. Another consumer may insist on personalized service, while the next one may feel the personalized approach is an invasion of privacy. Who’s right? They all are.

Determining what customers want from their experience with a company is a challenging task, especially when getting into such specifics. Third party remote call monitoring can help significantly, measuring the experience of each call. Of course, the point is to get it right before the recording starts. In a number of cases, that may start with the local culture. If the call center in the U.S. is handling calls from Canada, for instance, does American culture prevail?

A recent BPA Quality blog focused on the impact culture has on the customer experience. An example shared focused on a customer service training session the company delivered in Germany in the 1980s. The suggestion that an agent thank the customer for the call was rejected by the agents involved. Why? There was a cultural difference BPA didn’t immediately recognize. Germans just didn’t thank customers for a call. If the company were to implement the advice, it would likely put off the caller.

A similar situation in the UK 10 years later received a skeptical response from agents who felt their callers would not want to be wished a good day at the end of the call. The advice was again seen as too Americanized – it was just something they didn’t really do there.

But something has changed since that time. Our global marketplace has shortened the distance between us. BPA is now finding through third party remote call monitoring that 98 percent of all German calls end with thanking the caller for the call. Likewise, the company is hard-pressed to identify a UK-based interaction that doesn’t include wishing the caller a good day.

What happened? Customer expectations starting changing and companies stopped using the culture as an excuse to deliver bad service. This is not to suggest that culture never plays a roll, but it definitely doesn’t have the same influence it once did. Companies seeking a competitive advantage through the customer experience are more focused on the expressed desires of the customer base rather than the local culture.

Still, the local culture has to be considered if the call center is serving a customer base located offshore. Consumers may have changed their expectations when it comes to the anticipated experience, but that experience must still respect the local culture.

Edited by Blaise McNamee

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