The Customer Service Survey
Why is Good Service so Hard to Deliver?
Tue - October 31, 2006 04:02 PM in
Each Monday, the Wall St. Journal has a special report section comprised of articles on business leadership issues. This week the topic was customer service. Because WSJ Online is a subscription service, I can't link you to the articles, but I can summarize and comment.
One reporter wrote about self service technology, essentially repeating a VocaLabs mantra based on our experiences in testing such technology. It is not the technology people dislike, but rather poor implementation of it. The article mentions voice recognition systems as having problems with regional accents (a past problem, seen much less today) or trying to use the service in noisy areas (still an issue that "smart" designers recognize and so quickly let the caller opt for touchtone or a human).
Bad Web sites get a jab too. We sense that sloppy design and an abundance of flashy graphics can distract and frustrate users. Web is still more time consuming than picking up the phone and so will not replace the phone for some long time as the primary way consumers communicate with a company. In truth, we see that Web has not reduced telephone traffic, but instead has added a new access channel creating MORE customer contact. And interestingly, we get the sense that Web pages that waste time looking for answers and companies which fail to quickly respond to e-mail inquiries frustrate customers even more than poor phone based services. In the Internet world, savvy users expect instant feedback, and when they don't get it, they are even more frustrated than the phone user who has been conditioned to expect lesser service.
Another article addresses outsourcing of customer care overseas. We see that companies who made the move entirely for economic reasons are realizing their mistake when callers can't understand accents, or when cultural issues interfere. The off shore call centers are getting it though, and are constantly improving.
Speech analytics is mentioned, and we will see more and more interest in this "solution". Many companies invested money in call recording technology only to find that it is very resource intense and expensive to have someone monitoring even a small percent of calls. A result is that much of this recording technology is unused. There are now several entities marketing technology in which the recordings are listened to by a machine looking for angry voice tones and key words like "cancel my account" in order to drill down to specific problem call recordings. Time will tell if this is an effective solution, or if there aren't more cost effective ways than paying for recording technology that didn't fix the problem, and then paying for more technology to fix the fix.
One article lists pet peeves of consumers such as "Why, when you call and punch in your account information, do we have to give it again when we get to a live operator?" Two reasons: poor or dated technology that doesn't allow the passing of such information from system to system inside a company, AND surprisingly because much of it is necessary by law for privacy and security issues.
Another article points to the dangers of corporate dictates on how to treat customers that are issued by MBAs with no real face to face experience with those same consumers.
Still another article writes of the constant battle between controlling costs and creating a repeat customer. The story reaches no conclusions other than it is a balancing act that can hurt a company if they guess wrong.
From our perspective, we have mixed emotions about all this. On the one hand, that more companies recognize they can give better service is a good thing, and good for our business. OTOH, it is depressing when we wonder how companies could have been so blind as to dig holes regarding service quality that they now have to climb out of.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Bad Web sites get a jab too. We sense that sloppy design and an abundance of flashy graphics can distract and frustrate users. Web is still more time consuming than picking up the phone and so will not replace the phone for some long time as the primary way consumers communicate with a company. In truth, we see that Web has not reduced telephone traffic, but instead has added a new access channel creating MORE customer contact. And interestingly, we get the sense that Web pages that waste time looking for answers and companies which fail to quickly respond to e-mail inquiries frustrate customers even more than poor phone based services. In the Internet world, savvy users expect instant feedback, and when they don't get it, they are even more frustrated than the phone user who has been conditioned to expect lesser service.
Another article addresses outsourcing of customer care overseas. We see that companies who made the move entirely for economic reasons are realizing their mistake when callers can't understand accents, or when cultural issues interfere. The off shore call centers are getting it though, and are constantly improving.
Speech analytics is mentioned, and we will see more and more interest in this "solution". Many companies invested money in call recording technology only to find that it is very resource intense and expensive to have someone monitoring even a small percent of calls. A result is that much of this recording technology is unused. There are now several entities marketing technology in which the recordings are listened to by a machine looking for angry voice tones and key words like "cancel my account" in order to drill down to specific problem call recordings. Time will tell if this is an effective solution, or if there aren't more cost effective ways than paying for recording technology that didn't fix the problem, and then paying for more technology to fix the fix.
One article lists pet peeves of consumers such as "Why, when you call and punch in your account information, do we have to give it again when we get to a live operator?" Two reasons: poor or dated technology that doesn't allow the passing of such information from system to system inside a company, AND surprisingly because much of it is necessary by law for privacy and security issues.
Another article points to the dangers of corporate dictates on how to treat customers that are issued by MBAs with no real face to face experience with those same consumers.
Still another article writes of the constant battle between controlling costs and creating a repeat customer. The story reaches no conclusions other than it is a balancing act that can hurt a company if they guess wrong.
From our perspective, we have mixed emotions about all this. On the one hand, that more companies recognize they can give better service is a good thing, and good for our business. OTOH, it is depressing when we wonder how companies could have been so blind as to dig holes regarding service quality that they now have to climb out of.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 04:02 PM | | | | |