Meeting Empowered Consumer Expectations
The New Rules of Caller Interaction
Once upon a time, there were customers who were patient, who had few alternative options to your product or service. Customers who weren’t likely to bash your brand at the slightest provocation. Today, you have customers expecting instant gratification, who have endless options that are only a click or call away. Customers with the ability to notify hundreds – if not thousands – of people in an instant about a poor experience with your brand.
Welcome to the age of the empowered consumer. You’re no longer the only game in town and your customers know it. They’re not going to stand by politely while you take your time to answer their call or meet their need. But you can bet they will take to social media or other channels to voice their displeasure.
This challenge places increasing importance and scrutiny on the caller experience you’re offering to your customers. With more than 75% of all customer interactions still occurring via the telephone, the caller experience is your most important customer satisfaction channel. As such, you should continually be asking yourself: Is it simple? Is it fast? Does it meet their needs? Or is it slow with long hold and wait times? Does it make them interact with outdated and frustrating automation solutions that trap them in a loop? Does it not have the right options or the ability to get help when needed?
Part of the challenge in addressing the empowered consumer stems from the disconnect between how well a company perceives they are doing in meeting customer expectations, compared to how customers perceive they are actually being treated. A recent poll discovered that:
· 80% of CEOs think their brand delivers a superior customer experience, yet…
· Only 8% of their customers agree
These findings indicate an alarming and far too common fact – many companies aren’t aware of how they interact with customers, let alone how their customers perceive the experience. And a key blind spot for these companies is the caller experience delivered to customers.
In many instances, company executives may not even be aware of how calls are handled. Seriously. I’ve talked to many C-level executives who say they “take pride in the fact that we use 100% live answer (operators or agents) to greet and connect callers”. They then look perplexed when I ask them how they consider it live answer when their published main number uses a 1980’s push button auto attendant to greet and connect callers, which makes for a lengthy and frustrating caller experience and makes it difficult to get to an operator or agent. “Ummm, we’ll look into that.” Yeah, you might want to do that…
In the realm of the empowered consumer, businesses should first focus on acknowledgement and understanding.
Acknowledge:
· Empowered consumers, not businesses, now set the playing rules for the customer experience
· The caller experience is a crucial component of the customer experience, making up 75%+ of all customer interactions
Understand:
· Take an in-depth dive into your voice network infrastructure and call handling practices. How are callers greeted and connected? How many different call centers do we use? Where are these numbers published? What technology is utilized?
· Look at things from the perspective of the customer. How long did it take me to reach a routine destination when calling the assorted numbers? How quickly was I connected to an operator or agent to meet my complex need? Was I put on hold? Did I have to repeat myself?
Without a comprehensive analysis of what your company does today to please callers, you stand little hope of choosing the right solutions to help you deliver an even greater caller experience tomorrow.