Press “1” To Speak To Someone, Anyone In Customer Service
Source: Adobe Stock by Everything Bagel
With all the advancements in convenience based technology, we’ve lost touch both literally and figuratively with humans. From live chat bots to support@ emails to 800 numbers with recordings, why is it so hard to just get a person on the other end of the phone? Not all customer service problems fit into a dropdown or can be easily explained over email. To take it a step further, add in a layer of new software anxiety and you have a full blown customer service crisis on your hands; at least that’s how it can feel from your customers perspective. Why would a brand ever want to put a customer in that position? Feeling frustrated, helpless, confused, and questioning why they chose you? The answer is, they shouldn’t. Customer service experiences should always remain human, easily accessible and progress towards a “quick to fix” solution for your customer.
From the brands perspective and in their very loose defense, I understand that resources can be difficult to manage in terms of human capital but the consequence outweighs the financial investment in my humble opinion. People are reasonable, understanding and patient if they know they have a clearly defined path to solve a problem. Hell, I’d seriously wait 3 days if a support@ email responded with a “Thank you for your patience and for being a valued customer of ours. We’ll call you in 3 days to troubleshoot your issue.” As a customer, I’d rather wait to speak to a person who can process and listen to my exact issue and offer solutions in what could likely take 10 mins, rather than try to work through a series of email instructions from different customer service agents that don’t fully relate to my exact issue and end up back at square one.
Customer service experiences, good or bad, are opportunities for a brand to show you who they are. It’s a chance to make your customer feel valued, appreciated and supported. Not every issue requires access to a person, but the option should be there. Why? Because as a google everything type of society, most people will exhaust FAQs, forums and youtube to work through their own issues, but once you’ve tried what feels like everything, we’re coming back to you, the brand, and will expect you to deliver.
If you can’t tell by now, this happened to me recently. After the 5th email exchange, all with different agents, by the way, that I had to re-explain my issue to each time, I simply asked if there was a number I could call to discuss the issue. They said “We’ve found that email and chat are the best ways for us to gather the information we need to answer your questions completely, accurately and efficiently.” Well, as your customer I would politely disagree.
So as a solutions-focused person and someone who lives and breathes brand, what could have made this experience better?
Following my unresolved live chat experience, the agent offered me a link to “commonly asked questions” and the support@ email. A proposed additional option could’ve been to “schedule a customer service call with an agent” to work through my issue. I would’ve likely tried the other 2 options first anyway, but knowing I could connect to a human if all else failed, would’ve given me a feeling of support and care that I simply didn’t have in this case.
What happened to having a customer service 800 number in your footer, on the contact page or FAQs page? That number can guide a customer through a series of filtering options making sure they’re connected to the right “person” to solve their issue immediately. This is assuming call center staff is available and can handle the call volume; however, if that isn't an option, you (the brand) can offer hours of availability. This would give customers a window of problem solving opportunity that fits your brands capabilities while still putting their needs first.
Assign a single agent to a problem to prevent the customer from having to re-explain the issue each time in hopes of a different outcome. Isn’t that the very definition of insanity? Doing this will give you (your brand via your customer service agent) and your customer the opportunity to build a mutually beneficial relationship resulting in a deeper connection to the brand. Rather than feeling passed through an emotionless group of names, your customer will feel grateful towards the representative who solved their problem and your brand for making it easy on them.
After the 2nd exchange of support@ emails, maybe then provide access to a phone number. Something to the effect of “if you’re still having trouble, schedule a call with one of our agents” and include a support ticket number so whoever is assigned the issue will have the necessary info to pick up where the customer left off. This will show your customer that you, as a brand, value their time, by knowing what they’ve already tried to troubleshoot the issue and provide 1-on-1 support to finish the job.
Automated experiences are no doubt here to stay but brands can’t forget that people are at the other end of them. We have to keep customer service experiences human by delivering a valued, service-based experience that truly puts the customers needs first. When brands do that, they in turn receive trust, rave reviews, and loyalty from their customers.
Sometimes all it takes is a voice at the other end of a phone to let us know we aren’t alone in our frustration.
