I bet your parents are like mine and love to share their call center experiences because they feel close to you when they deal in your world. It turns out that my mother has been dealing with a banking issue for some time now and has been assigned an agent to call directly. At first she thought she was fortunate to have a direct contact in a sea of 1-800 numbers and endless mazes of automated services but as she’s telling me about this, it’s clear that it’s anything but great.
We all can see that the bank is trying to provide a better customer experience by building a one-on-one relationship but my mother cannot understand why she’s in a silo where no one else in the bank can offer much assistance. Her agent is currently on vacation and no one else in the bank can help because her customer record hasn’t been updated with progress notes. She is unable to resolve the banking issue with another agent and is not happy with the idea of waiting until her agent returns. We can see how the bank is in desperate need of several process improvements but we are not “normal” customers. In their effort to satisfy, they have actually caused much dissatisfaction for everyone who falls into this coverage gap.
Do you have processes built on good intentions but fail operationally? Are you able to leverage your customer experience measurement program to define (really to prove) the failures to those who own the process? For this bank, they want to keep customers with the same agent so a relationship is built with a single point of contact for all the sensitive banking materials being exchanged. But what is seemingly a small communication breakdown is going to grow into a poor overall customer experience and a customer loyalty problem for my mother and many other customers.
How many barriers does your company erect on the customers’ path? Do these customer experience comments sound at all familiar?:
“I was surprised my customer care agent’s number just rang and rang. I thought he was supposed to be there all the time to take status calls. How am I supposed to know anything about my order status if I can’t get him on the phone?”
“I paid you for this service to be done. Why do I have to keep checking on this to find out if it has been done? Apparently no information is supposed to mean that I need to call you again.”
“So she tells me that anyone answering the phone can help me with my problem but turned out to be such a lie. She insisted that I tell her all about my account and then says ‘oh, you are right, you need to speak to a financial specialist’.”
Happy Wednesday!
