If you ask a call center agent how many times a day they get yelled at by customers, the answer is too often – “all day long.” Agents bear the brunt of unrealistic customer expectations when the sales and marketing staff are overselling, overpromising or omitting information about the product at the point of sale.
While seemingly obvious, we constantly have to remind clients that when they mislead customers just to close the deal, the agents will ultimately feel the negativity (and so does the brand). And it’s a vicious cycle – the customers are unhappy and complain to the agents, and the agents don’t feel supported by their organization leading to churn in the call center. What should you do to better manage expectations at the point of sale so that your agents can do their jobs better? Are you quantitatively determining the impact of the point of sale? When should you say “yes” to saying “no”?
Here are a few indications of POS issues from some real-time customer experience measurement programs:
“I wish I would have known this product couldn’t be kept in my garage. The sales person told me this was the best machine for my needs and would work in all climates – including my hot garage in the summer – but I definitely got taken.”
“Never again! I got pushed into buying a product that was completely wrong for what I needed. I guess you were more interested in making a buck than in making a long-term customer.”
“I really wanted one of your reps to answer my question. Does your company reward the inexperienced people who work in the store? I trusted this young man because he worked in your store and it’s logical to expect that he was trained. Apparently, your company is behind your product only to say ‘buyer beware, sucker’.
I used to work at a Call Center company and yes, we do get yelled at most of the time for reasons that sales reps promises or assurances that were not met. We were trained that it would be better to set customer expectation. With this, we should be able to avoid unnecessary calls like a product not performing to expectation as promised by a sales rep.