Ever since I left running customer service (CS) operations (Amazon 1999 to late 2001), friends and family have sent me their CS and customer experience (CX) tales of woe. Several of them have made it into my books1 and three more stories arrived in the last few weeks. Each one describes how friction irritates customers and encourages them to seek other arrangements, cancel contracts, and share their frustration widely. If asked the classic Net Promoter Score (NPS) question, “Would you recommend us to a friend?” each person would surely submit a 0 or 1 for “Not likely at all”.2
In the spirit of the stories in my books, I have disguised the companies. Do you have stories like these?
Just Fax it to Us?!
“I disputed a credit card charge related to a hotel room charge booked on Priceline.
My bank’s merchant dispute team required that documentation to support the claim be faxed to them. A supervisor explained that I could not provide this via a secure download or email. She explained that a team in another city receives the fax, scans it, and then attaches it to my record. That takes up to 3 business days and I must call them to determine if they received it, as they claim not able to make outbound calls or email to send a message to my bank account message center.
I had to go to my local bank branch and have a manager fax it.”
This has so many friction points! An escalated phone call (time and effort), inability to use secure channels (worry), figuring out how to fax, not easy for most of us (time and effort), and driving to the local branch (time and effort).
So Hard to Cancel!
“I contacted my broadband provider to cancel TV and streaming services and devices when I moved to Texas and to keep Internet and home security until my house is sold.
Just getting to a human to set this up took forever; it took almost an hour on the phone with the agent to get this done. I scheduled an appointment to return the TV set-top box to their store instead of just sending it back but when I arrived to return the box, the rep informed me that I also needed to return the modem. However, it was not their modem. I won’t relive all the additional frustrations after the store experience (and there were quite a few) and just fast forward to the latest. After selling my house, I contacted them again to terminate the Internet and Home Security services. Once again, just getting to a human to set this up took forever. The agent informed me that I needed to return the security touch screen but I told the agent that the previous agent confirmed that I did not need to return the touch screen since I owned it. The agent said OK and that he would note it in the record. He confirmed that I did not need to return the touch screen. However, this wasn’t the end of it. The company texted me to return equipment which confused me since I had already done so, but they kept texting me. I finally opened one of the text messages but it did not offer which device to return. I clicked “Continue” and got “Please select a device”, clicked “Cancel”, and then they showed that I still had the TV set box (returned to the store) and a modem (which I never had; I always owned my modem).
Out of frustration and curiosity about what they might do, I completed their NPS survey and gave them a 0, the lowest possible score. In response to “We’d love to know more! Can you tell us a little bit about why you answered 0 as your likelihood to recommend us?, she replied “If you truly want to know more, please have a human who is sincerely interested in understanding why I answered 0 contact me.”
I did not get a response. However, I have received three more texts from their bot telling me to turn in my equipment.”
Where do I start on this one? As with the first example, there is too much effort, tone deafness, not keeping records across channels, bugging the customer (and not trusting her), and time — too much friction.
The Go-Around
“I logged in to the state’s automated toll road site to change my wife’s permanent license plate, called the 800#, was placed on hold for about 15 minutes, and spoke to the first-line CS rep.
I told her I wanted to submit a software bug report, and she put me on hold. Eventually, she returned and told me to use the website form submission. I patiently explained I had done that a month ago with no confirmation and no reply. I asked to speak to a supervisor who came on the phone. I told him I couldn’t edit an existing CAR record and all I wanted to do was change the license plate. I suggested that if I am having problems, it’s likely that other customers are. He offered to help me submit a bug report via the website but I also explained to him that I had already submitted a bug report with no response, another bug!
I asked him to give me an email I could send my bug report to, like his email address, but he refused — Everything has to go through their case reporting system. He offered to walk me through submitting a case. I explained that given my 48 years of software experience, his suggestion was laughable. I asked him if he saw the irony in me trying to help them and him being unable to? He did not.
Incredible.
I told him I had already wasted too much time and politely hung up.
Hold time plus talking time was 32 minutes.
You cannot make this stuff up.”
In this example, there was also friction in and across channels, not hearing what the customer requested (to help them find and fix the bugs), and a waste of time.
Anyone Listening? Acting?
Clearly, these examples should be taken seriously by the companies but (1) Is anybody listening and acting? and (2) Are there concerted programs to fix these problems? Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is “No,” so friction continues and customers will leave. As noted, even when my friends complained during their interactions and provided low c-sat or Net Promoter scores, they didn’t hear back from the companies’ CS/CX leaders so that they could understand that their frustration matters.
Here’s how to stop the madness!
- Establish a closed-loop process that senses and reports friction.
- Insist that your CS and CX executives listen to customer calls, collect good and bad stories, read survey scores, and respond personally to frustrated customers.
- Size the impact on costs or revenues.
- Assign ownership and dig into root causes to eradicate the need or find digital solutions that customers will use.
- Test new approaches and learn how they might reduce friction.
- Track the improvements.
- Celebrate successes along the way!
There’s a lot more in my last book The Frictionless Organization.3
Notes
1The Best Service is No Service (2008), Your Customer Rules! (2015), and The Frictionless Organization (2022). My co-author and I feature “Good stories” and “Bad stories” in all three books.
2 There are a lot of guides for NPS including:
https://www.qualtrics.com/en-gb/experience-management/customer/net-promoter-score/#:~:text=NPS%20stands%20for%20Net%20Promoter,A%20higher%20score%20is%20desirable, accessed 27 August 2024.
3 Price & Jaffe, The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort (2022 https://www.frictionlessorg.com accessed 27 August 2024.
