Call Center Management Featured Article
Preventing the Customer Support Scourge of 'Silent Switchers'
When it comes to customer support quality, many companies rely heavily on surveying their customers or keeping an eye on social media. After all, when customers are unhappy with your products or services, or the quality of customer support you provide, they’ll tell you, right?
Not necessarily. While Americans may be more likely than others to voice their displeasure with a company, other customers – think the British and Canadians – may be what the customer support industry should be calling “silent switchers.” These are people who, unhappy with a customer experience, will simply abandon a company and go seek another.
A new report by Accenture (News - Alert) found that only one fifth of Canadians have posted a negative comment online after having a bad commercial experience, and only 49 per cent of Canadian consumers have switched a provider in the last year because of poor customer service, according to Chris Herhalt writing for CP24. Nearly three quarters – 73 percent – of customers report they become frustrated when providers fail to offer convenient interaction methods.
“Canadians are less likely to put up a fight, but they are less forgiving and harder to win back once they are gone,” Accenture says.
While it helps to offer unhappy customers incentives to stay -- of Canadians who switched a service said they could have been retained if the company they were leaving made them some sort of offer of improvement – it helps even more to improve customer support channels across the board, so customers aren’t disappointed by service to begin with. This means evaluating your current customer journey and finding out where the biggest roadblocks are. It helps to test your own channels and systems to find the snags on your own…before your customers do.
One of the ways companies are losing customers is by focusing their investment dollars and efforts into digital, low-cost channels exclusively, without considering how those digital channels are blending with more traditional channels like voice. Yes, customers want easy self-service options. Yes, they are willing to try alternatives like Facebook (News - Alert) messenger or bots. But they also expect that these channels will be integrated with the higher cost live-help channels. Introducing a new bot and hoping that it will “take care” of all customer concerns is a big mistake.
“Companies need to recognize that digital capabilities are just one facet of a great customer experience,” according to Accenture. “Profitability is not bound by a particular channel. It resides in the digital/physical blur. Successful companies own this ‘high ground’ by optimizing their investments across channels, while simultaneously delivering the outcomes that their customers demand.”
Accenture writes that organizations hoping to succeed will need to develop new skills in areas as diverse as analytics, channel integration, experience management and problem resolution. Hiring practices, skill-development models and incentive programs will need to change accordingly. With a great analytics strategy in place, companies can do more than simply keep customers: they can use the insight data analysis provides to make strategic changes that will improve customer choice – and the amount of money customers spend – to prepare for a successful future.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi