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The Caller Experience And Your Brand

by Mark Bedard, Director of Marketing, Parlance Corporation - January 4, 2016

The Caller Experience and Your Brand

The common perception is that the way customers communicate with businesses has changed dramatically in recent years. The fact that they are now called “contact centers” and not “call centers” should tell you something about the changing face of communications within the enterprise. They’re probably not receiving as many calls anymore, and other communications options such as chat, social media, and email are taking over, right?

As it turns out, wrong! Voice is still #1, and its not even close:



Source: Contact Babel, US Contact Center Report 2015

The reason behind the ongoing domination of voice calls as the preferred customer communications channel comes down to time and effort. Many customers continue to prefer voice calls over other communications channels, as the telephone is still perceived as the fastest and easiest way to get their needs met.

Impact on Your Brand

With more than 70% of all customer interactions happening via telephony, efforts to improve the caller experience are a priority in today’s competitive marketplace, where customers may decide to take their business elsewhere if their telephony interactions aren’t prompt and pleasant.

As part of an overall customer satisfaction strategy, voice calls play a vital role in how customers view your brand. A phone call is often the first person-to-person interaction a customer may have with a business. It creates an opportunity to reinforce your brand values and show that you value the customer’s business. Yet, more often than not, the difficulties in balancing service for callers with costs lead to compromises that can cause long ring and hold times, unavailable operators, or rushed interactions with operators or agents that leave the customer’s needs unfulfilled. The repercussions of such poor service to callers can go well beyond the potential lost revenue from that single customer.

To put this in perspective, consider the following facts:

· A dissatisfied customer will tell 9-15 people about it. And approximately 13% of your dissatisfied customers will tell more than 20 people about their problem.
Source: The White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC.

· It costs five to six times as much to get a new (first time) customer as it does to keep a current one.
Source: the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC.

· It takes 12 positive service incidents to make up for one negative incident
Source: “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner

Evolving Caller Experience Expectations

Once the bane of customers, automated call routing and self-service applications are becoming more accepted in recent years. Improved technology -- such as next-generation speech recognition and natural language understanding technologies -- have provided a much-improved caller experience in comparison to older push-button DTMF solutions ("Press 1 to reach sales. Press 2 to reach service…"). Indeed, user perception of automated call handling and self-service solutions is improving dramatically, as indicated by recent polls:

· The number of consumers preferring automated self-service has doubled to 55% in the last five years. (Source: Convergys)

· By 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. (Source: Gartner)

Despite this growing acceptance of automation and self-service, companies should tread carefully into this territory. If callers have interacted with another business that utilizes the latest speech recognition and natural language technology to connect callers and fulfill their needs, what will the impression be if they encounter a frustrating 1980's-era push-button auto attendant when they contact your business?

No matter which avenue you choose to go down -- sufficient live agent/operator staffing to provide prompt and patient service 24/7, or a next-generation speech recognition and natural language enabled automated solution -- an understanding of the caller experience and its impact on your brand will go a long way in selecting the right support resources for your company. But for Pete's sake, please don’t use an old auto attendant with 90 seconds of instructions, options, and different buttons to press. Your customers will thank you, and your brand reputation will thank you.

 
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