Human Or Robot
“When someone phones, they get a human. It’s not rocket
science is it?”. So says Andy Page,
Founder of “Brilliant Bikes”.
“Customer Service Hotlines” are common, but what
differentiates the “winners” is that, when a customer calls the number, a human
being answers the call. All-too often
we’ve experienced something like:
Welcome to the [name
of company]’s Customer Service Hotline.
To, hear your balance, press 1…”
After listening to several options, which may or may not
include the option of speaking to a real-live person, you find that you’ve
spent two minutes of the your time (with attendant call costs) not getting
anywhere.
The arguments for automated service run along the lines of:
- It’s cheaper to have an automated service;
- It’s more efficient for directing customer calls to the right department/person.
What people tend to forget is that what’s more important is
what the customer wants. For smaller businesses, a personal touch
isn’t an issue, but for larger ones handling hundreds, if not thousands, of calls
a day, it’s statistically more likely that their Customer Service Hotline will
see more action.
Ideally, your hotline should be in the same country as the
caller. For some, cost considerations
have meant “offshoring” to other (read “cheaper”) countries. The result has been complaints that Customer
Hotline Staff in the country receiving the calls are not fit for purpose. Indeed, some UK businesses now boast that their
hotline staff are UK-based.
One way of minimising calls to the hotline is to make sure
that people get the right product/service at the right time and price. You can never guarantee that service will
always be perfect, but ask your customer service staff what the main issues are
that they have to deal with and they’ll tell you where the main problems
lie.
Otherwise, what’s so hard about having a person to re-route
calls? Train them well enough, and they
may even be able to field some opf the questions themselves…
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. After more than 20 years in the global financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy to offer solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Selling, Strategy
posted by William Martin @ 09:46
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