In the last of a series on customer services, today i”l outline four things you CAN do to reduce the effort needed for customers to enage with you.
I think I’ve made the case that its reducing dissatisfaction that drives better performance than providing more WOW moments to increase satisfaction.
In a customer care situation, whether it’s on the phone or through self-service options, some of the key problems that affect the customer’s ability to quickly resolve problems include:
- Repeat contacts (issues not solved first time)
- Channel switching (phone, to website, mobile to laptop, phone to personal contact)
- Transfers (to a more qualified person, to a supervisor)
- Repeating information (didn’t get it, didn’t get it right, new person, no access to your file)
- Generic service (person, robot, chatbot)
- Policies and processes customers have to endure (maybe good for the company but not for us)
Research found that customers who faced low effort getting problems resolved were 94% more likely to repurchase and 88% more likely to increase spend. It also found that 81% were likely to provide negative word of mouth if the effort level was high. In other words, the more effort a customer puts in, the more disloyal they are.
How to Deliver an effortless service experience
There’s no one right way to deliver effortless customer care experiences, but here are four critical ares to consider:
Channel Stickiness: Many organizations believe that customers want a choice of channels to resolve their problems, but the truth is they don’t want to bounce around channels, they want fast easy resolution. Most customers prefer self-service options (i.e., the website), but it needs to be simple and easy to use.
Next Issue Avoidance: Most customer issues are not resolved on the first contact, although that’s what most organizations believe. So the key is to understand what causes a customer to have to call back or connect with you repeatedly, and put in place processes/tactics that resolve these in the first contact.
Experience Engineering: How customer feel when they are resolving their issues is more important than what they do. Customer effort decreases when service focuses on empathy and advocacy ( active support of customer) and the use of positive language to ward off negative feelings and actions. Anchoring the discussing, ensuring the sequence of options result in a positive outcome, also plays a part in decreasing customer effort.
Frontline Control: Empower front-line workers (like contact center workers). Think of them more like knowledge workers, and give them the training and tools to make the experience better. Review what are the outcomes of service engagements and give them the opportunity to quickly solve problems. Don’t enable escalation to a supervisor when you can empower a skilled operator to accede to reasonable requests.
I believe you need to measure customer satisfaction and customer dissatisfaction separately. Decreasing dissatisfaction is the best means to grow your business, but you need the occasional WOW factor to keep customers interested… but not too many. Following on from this to measure easy of engagement, there is only one thing you need to ask customers after a service or support call: how easy did the company made it for you to handle your issue. Based on this metric, you know if the effort was low or high. This is the best way to detect potential disloyalty and allows service functions to impact customer dissatisfaction and satisfaction scores.