With Facebook pages and Twitter handles and this, that and the other, is anyone even picking up the phone anymore to be served by one of your agents? You bet they are and what callers experience has been affected by your Social CRM.
Recently, I had to deal with a return and some customer service issues of my own so I called into the call center. After nearly 10 minutes on hold I was finally connected with a call center agent that immediately made it clear that he didn’t know what he was talking about and didn’t know how to assist me. I was given a scripted, mediocre response and directed to the web site, but not before he made an insulting comment that I should have started there in the first place. Seriously!
Social CRM has its place and certainly is a fast-growing service channel, but that doesn’t mean that we diminish the focus on customer service. If you have ill-equipped, sassy agents answering calls to quickly direct people to serve themselves online, it’s likely that you are pushing disgruntled customers to voice themselves publicly on your Facebook and Twitter pages. The result makes them a customer service nightmare for your agents monitoring your Social CRM.
Do any of these customers sound like one of yours?:
“Your web site says it has a 24-hour turnaround for customer service issues so imagine my surprise when three days later I still didn’t get a response after I called in to your service center, sent an email and tweeted you. What good are all of these options if no one responds?”
“I have never been treated with such disrespect as I was the other day by one of your call center agents. I was so upset I posted a negative comment to your Facebook page. You didn’t care too much about me when I called but you certainly care about your reputation on Facebook.”
“I just don’t understand the point of sending your service team an email to get my issue resolved if it always means I have to follow up with a phone call. If I wanted to call and speak to someone I would have done that in the first place.”
Happy Wednesday!
