The emotional component of customer experience: the next competitive battleground – Interview with Qaalfa Dibeehi of Beyond Philosophy
April 13, 2012Client relations – A phone call is worth 10 emails. A meeting is worth 100 calls
April 20, 2012
In an ideal world when we have a problem with something we have bought most of us still would prefer it if we could pick up the phone and get through to someone straight away at any time of day or night. Right?
However, waiting in a queue when you call customer services seems to be a fact of life these days. This is unfortunate, especially when we consider the negative impact queuing has on overall customer sentiment and the customer experience when we are made to wait.
It’s not the fault of the customer but, in many cases, it is the customer who suffers.
Despite this negative impact, I believe that many large companies are not yet convinced by the economics of better and larger call centres with more integrated systems and, in some cases, more people.
Then, over the last few weeks, I’ve seen the following ad a couple of times on TV:
Being a big Star Wars fan it really caught my eye.
Offering a call-back service is not an ideal solution as it really is only a ‘patch’ over a company’s inability to deal with the demand on its call centre at certain times. For some firms, I fear, this is at all times if you look at the ‘Worst Waits’ research completed by WeQ4U recently.
But, a patch or fix like the one in the video can do wonders to the overall experience. It’s not ideal but it can make a good job out of a poor situation.
Why then don’t more companies implement more solutions like this? Is it about cost or resources or level of care or importance or ignorance or not wanting to be seen as a copycat or revenue erosion via premium call number use or what? Who knows? I’m sure the answer will vary from company to company.
But digging a bit deeper into the WeQ4U research shows that customers don’t have to wait for their customer service providers to introduce a call-back service as the folks across at WeQ4U have produced the WeQ4U App, which allows callers to get through to these call centres without waiting on the line AND without paying the premium call rate charges (up to 30p per minute) that many of these companies levy. Genius!
You can check out the iphone App here and the Android App here.
The app is developed by Matt King and his team at Orderly Software (Guys, you need to work on the look and feel of ALL of your sites) and their work is not limited to an app for customers. On their business side, they have also developed a software product that can help reduce the rate of call abandonment into call centres by as much as 90% and they can do this if they have their App or not. They already have some big clients on board already that you can check out here and here.
Great work and a much needed ‘patch’ to a seemingly perennial problem.
Thanks to sunface13 for the image.
10 Comments
Hello Adrian
I thank you for pointing me towards this app – i have downloaded it and look forward to using it and testing it out.
As for your question: companies do what they do because they view (in the books, the accounts, the p&l) customer service as a cost. It is cost that impacts the bottom line. If the accountants would allow these companies to capitalise the cost of customer service and write it off say over 5 years – I imagine you would see different behaviour. In that case I would be able to invest now and have my successors pay part of the cost in terms of hit to the p&l.
All the best
maz
Hi Maz,
You’re welcome. I’m always on the lookout and happy to share new tools.
Your point about accounting and capitalisation is an interesting one. I know that companies can capitalise tangible things but am not sure about intangibles re to do with people. I will ask Hana, my better half and an accountant, how this could work.
Thanks for making me think.
All the best,
Adrian
Hi Adrian,
As a man on the inside..
There are two schools of thought. One is that customer service is a cost (as Maz says). You can trade off a few % of abandon rate for a substantial labour saving
The other school of thought is that if a customer phones they want something. That is either:
1. To buy something
2. To complain, claim, change their details…
If they fall in camp 1 it is a good idea to answer the phone, otherwise they will buy that something elsewhere.
If they fall into camp 2 it is a good idea to answer the phone, as they will phone back if you don’t
Either way it is a good idea to answer the phone.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people in many large organisations who are blind to this logic. And until that is fixed all the patches in the world won’t make a blind bit of difference
BTW loved the ad
James
Hi James,
Thanks for your comment and insight into the inside track.
Do you think that there is a growing momentum to the logic you mention?
Adrian
I live in a perpetual state of hope
I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you 😉
There are some places in the world where the call centers hardly answer the call may be due to a technical problem or due to any other reason. So it becomes like a nightmare.
Couldn’t agree more. Sometimes too much technology can cause more problems than it solves.