{"id":113100,"date":"2014-08-24T15:22:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T22:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interactionmetrics.com\/blog\/?p=640"},"modified":"2014-08-24T15:29:56","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T22:29:56","slug":"why-didnt-att-apologize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/why-didnt-att-apologize\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Didn’t AT&T Apologize?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this past Sunday\u2019s The Haggler, (David Segal. \u201cWhen Your Longest Call Is the One to Correct the Bill.\u201d The New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0August 14, 2014<\/a>),\u00a0David Segal covered a particularly bad customer service experience with AT&T. To summarize: AT&T wasted countless hours<\/em> of a doctor\u2019s time while resolving a billing issue that had been going on for years<\/em>. The Doctor\u2019s longest call weighed in at three hours and seventeen minutes. (That\u2019s all of James Cameron\u2019s Titanic<\/em>, plus a three-minute break.)<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that there were a lot of problems with this customer service interaction. But the worst part to me, as David Segal emphasizes, is that \u201cthere were no apologies.\u201d AT&T\u2019s spokesman responded to Segal\u2019s email by saying that an apology is a basic part of their policy. But apparently this apology never came.<\/p>\n

Why are these horror stories so rampant? Most likely because AT&T doesn\u2019t measure empathy<\/em>. In our work, we\u2019ve seen companies rate reps on time-to-resolution, cross-sell-rate, conversion rate, and even greeting perkiness. But (until we revamp their criteria<\/a>), we almost never see empathy\u2014a basic expectation customers have for customer service\u2014measured and rewarded.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the rise of social media, companies recognize that creating meaningful connections with customers is critical to their long-term success. And yet, they are still not measuring their connections with customers in meaningful ways.<\/p>\n

In order to truly improve customer service, companies need customer experience metrics that are based on concrete scoring rules. Among other things, these rules MUST quantify the degree to which associates empathize with their customers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll bet that if AT&T starts rating reps on their ability to empathize with customers, customers will start hearing a lot more apologies\u2014and when customers hear genuine apologies, they might not feel the need to involve The Haggler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this past Sunday\u2019s The Haggler, (David Segal. \u201cWhen Your Longest Call Is the One to Correct the Bill.\u201d The New York Times,\u00a0August 14, 2014),\u00a0David Segal covered a particularly bad customer service experience with AT&T. To summarize: AT&T wasted countless hours of a doctor\u2019s time while resolving a billing issue that had been going on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}