If you claim to be customer centric are you sure you’re walking and not just talking the talk of true customer service?
Last year I was prompted to question this of the Swiss cable company Cablecom. It had been desperately trying to address a long-term deficit in customer care versus its main competitor Swisscom. Swisscom has made customer service their MSP (main selling point or value proposition) and they are renowned for putting their customers first. Cablecom on the other hand had, until then, been trying to win customers through aggressive price cutting. In today’s connected world, especially when internet connection is concerned, dissatisfied customers will be quickly heard – across the net.
Back to the incident that prompted this post. After a few days of being ignored by Cablecom – my perception at least because my emails and phone calls were not being answered – I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I resorted to Twitter.
It was more than a year ago that Twitter was first referred to as today’s call centre. Guy Clapperton, author of “This is Social Media” wrote an interesting post about this in 2011 and surprisingly this idea was actually questioned at the time. Today, I would argue that it is much, much more than this.
Today’s call centres are a frustrating, if sometimes necessary experience for customers to endure. In many cases they are automated, with an often long and complex self-selection process of button pushing to arrive at the department one needs. Usually the result of all that effort is just a recording that either announces that the department needed is not open at the moment, or that the collaborators are currently busy and to please stay on the line. We are next subjected to music supposedly designed to calm our nerves, interspersed with messages suggesting alternatives to waiting on the line: going to the website to find a solution, to check their available FAQs, to complete a contact form, or to send an email. And then of course to add insult to injury, we hear the infamous message about our call being important to the company! Really? If so you’re not showing it, you’re not walking the talk.
Edison recently ran some research showing the patience that we have or rather don’t have today, on social media. Convince & Convert published some of the first results in an interesting article showing that companies must react immediately to customers using social media. One in five expect an answer within 15 minutes and 42% within the hour. For reference, when Guy Clapperton wrote his post almost three years ago, the level was almost half that at just 25%.
Companies that have understood customers’ frustration with help-line queues have found alternative solutions, such as arranging a call back, or providing sufficient staff to cover the busiest times, or at least to be available when the customer is most likely to need support.
Today there is no excuse for a consumer goods company to not be ready to help their users when they need it the most (>>Tweet this<<); for example:
- Early morning or late at night for personal care products
- Breakfast, lunch and evening meal times for food manufacturers
- Evenings and weekends for TV and technology products
Whilst in a few cases, there may be customers who use Twitter to jump the call centre queues, in most cases, it is a customer’s final cry for help before “going under”.
Taking the customers perspective is the absolute right thing to do for a company, but should we as customers also not take the company’s perspective when reaching out to them, or at least to the poor person who gets our wrath at the end of our email or phone call?
Jimmy N. from UPC-Cablecom, was one of the very best examples of what a customer service advisor should be, based upon my considerable years of working on both sides of contact centres. What did he do so well and what might we all learn from him, despite his relatively young age (early twenties)?
I summarise it as the new 7 Ps of customer services:
- Private: He immediately took the conversation offline, asking for my email address and then calling me to speak in person.
- Patient: He let me talk first, just listening until I had finished ranting, or stopped to ask a question.
- Polite: He never lost his cool, even when I did!
- Perceptive: Empathised, knowing when to push forward with the next topic and when to go back to reiterate what had been agreed.
- Professional: He was an expert, knew his topic and more importantly knew how to explain its complex details in simple terms.
- Pragmatic: Worked with me to find solutions that worked for us both.
- Perseverant: He continued to ask and answer questions until he was sure I was happy with everything.
Are these the seven best qualities for call centre advisors, or are there more “Ps” to mention? Let me know, especially you Jimmy, if you read this.
If you need help in optimising your own care centres or customer connections then we would love to support your plans. We know we can help, just tell us where and when. Contact us here and check out our website: http://www.c3centricity.com/home/engage
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C³Centricity used an image from Dreamstime in this post.
This article is based upon a post first published on C3Centricity in February 2013.
As we all know, marketing has the classic 4Ps and I’m glad that customer service is not missing out with its own set of 4Ps: painless, personalize, proactive and productive. It’s a good thing that there are 7Ps, which are not in the list. In my opinion, the 7 qualities listed above should be the characteristics of a true customer service professional.
In this day and age, customer service is becoming more personal than ever. Like any other brand, even customer service is an experience, and it reflects the culture and the philosophy of the organization we make business with. While I don’t expect the customer service agent to speak to me offline, I’d like for him or her to be patient, professional and polite. We don’t call a hotline center for nothing or just to vent out, we take the time raising a concern hoping it gets resolved after a conversation.
Thanks for your comment John.
I like your additions. Looks like there are a lot more Ps for customer service than for marketing! But then again, it is more important than marketing – or are they in fact the same?!!
Thank you, Denyse.
They say that customer service is the “new” marketing. It’s been there but we haven’t paid too much attention since we’re busy doing more branding work.
If we put more premium on customer service, and place it at the core (of marketing and communications), I think we can achieve more for the company and the brands. These days, there are customers who are more than willing to pay a few bucks for a good customer experience. Delivering great customer experience might soon surpass price and product as differentiating factors.
Couldn’t agree more John.
I have often reminded management that there may be consumers without brands, but there are NO brands without consumers.