The Customer Service Survey
They Start out Angry
Wed - April 5, 2006 03:41 PM in
It's no secret that there are certain types of businesses we all love to hate. The cell phone company, the cable TV provider etc. As many of you know, VocaLabs periodically releases studies on how some of these institutions fare regarding customer care, and in general, the answer is "not very well".
But to be fair, we need to look deeper. Take banks for example. With the proliferation of electronic banking, an increasing percent of callers only need to call if there is a problem. And the problems are increasingly complex.
How do you get an IVR to tell you the money missing from your account were overdraft charges because some payroll clerk at the office was a few hours late this month in submitting the transfer data, while the credit card company wasn't in pulling the automatic withdrawal? You can't reason with a computer. And since just about everybody gets paid at the same time, the system is overloaded with callers needing to vent and ask for help from a live agent.
There is plenty of blame in this example to spread around. But designing a customer care application, whether automated or agent, that would resolve an issue like this and take a caller from panic to delight is near impossible. No one should be surprised that under such conditions, the banking industry gets such a poor grade in customer satisfaction.
In a classic example of "If the world gives you lemons, make lemonade." I saw a commercial on cable TV last night touting that Washington Mutual is automatically forgiving their customers one overdraft charge every year, no questions asked. That's a pretty good indication of out-of-box thinking and why WAMU consistently scores among the highest in customer satisfaction and loyalty of ALL companies in our database.
Posted by Rick Rappe
How do you get an IVR to tell you the money missing from your account were overdraft charges because some payroll clerk at the office was a few hours late this month in submitting the transfer data, while the credit card company wasn't in pulling the automatic withdrawal? You can't reason with a computer. And since just about everybody gets paid at the same time, the system is overloaded with callers needing to vent and ask for help from a live agent.
There is plenty of blame in this example to spread around. But designing a customer care application, whether automated or agent, that would resolve an issue like this and take a caller from panic to delight is near impossible. No one should be surprised that under such conditions, the banking industry gets such a poor grade in customer satisfaction.
In a classic example of "If the world gives you lemons, make lemonade." I saw a commercial on cable TV last night touting that Washington Mutual is automatically forgiving their customers one overdraft charge every year, no questions asked. That's a pretty good indication of out-of-box thinking and why WAMU consistently scores among the highest in customer satisfaction and loyalty of ALL companies in our database.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 03:41 PM | | | | |