Call Center Management Featured Article
Nearly Three Quarters of Customers Will Ditch a Company for Poor Customer Service
While many companies pay lip service to customer support excellence, far fewer put their money where their press releases are and consistently provide the type of customer support that customers expect. Let’s face it: providing high-quality customer support is expensive, and it’s a tempting item to cut out of the budget when the numbers aren’t quite balancing. Maybe customers won’t notice the lethargic quality of customer support?
Customers ARE noticing, however, and the need to boost quality has never been more important. According to the recently released 2020 CallMiner (News - Alert) Churn Index, consumer reliance on phone-based customer support increased by 17 percent since 2018, and nearly 74 percent of consumers indicated they will switch providers after a poor contact center experience. On the flip side of the equation, 90 percent of consumers said they are likely to stay loyal after a positive call center experience. The research was based on a survey of 2,000 American adults over the past year.
“The rise of self-service has made human support even more critical,” said Adam Walton, COO at CallMiner. “Now more than ever, when customers call a provider, we expect one of two things: they are already frustrated due to a lack of information and online support, or they have a complex and sensitive issue. Both cases require emotionally intelligent ‘super-agents’ who can connect, solve problems and deliver exceptional service.”
Too few companies are truly meeting customer expectations today. The CallMiner survey has estimated that poor service and emotional factors force customers to churn, costing U.S. providers an estimated $168 billion per year.
Meeting customer expectations today involves giving agents more autonomy, better soft skills training, and flexible and up-to-date call center technologies. It also involves better leadership from call center management.
“Customer service agents are on the front line, managing their own transition to working from home and facing significant new demands for help from customers where they are often the only human interaction between consumers and brands,” noted Walton. “Equipping agents to satisfy the needs of emotionally charged customers is essential for retention, loyalty and revenue.”
Edited by Maurice Nagle