Far From Being Right, The Customer is Upset and Telling Others

This weekend in the New York Times there was an article (found here) that brought up the age old question of, "When I call a company for service, why can't I talk to someone?". I think this article brought up a good point about companies not being interested in service so much as saving money. When this happens, customers talk about it.

Complaining about bad customer service is such a sport now that it should be an Olympic event. But I am curious about how it devolved into this, if there is anything I can do about it and if it is ever going to change.

A little history: These interactive voice response systems, known as I.V.R., which recognize speech or touch tones, began in earnest in the 1980s, and the idea was that they would cut costs by reducing the number of people a company needed to respond to customer complaints.

The trouble is, companies were more interested in saving money than customer retention.

If companies don't focus on retention and loyalty when they interact with customers, then what happens most of the time? Customer get upset and then find another company to do business with.

For the first time, American corporations are acknowledging “customer service as something worth paying for rather than just red ink,” said Dr. Jon Anton, who looks at call centers worldwide and, using a number of criteria, compares how well they work. “If you can satisfy customers and keep them buying, it’s as important as marketing.”

So, what are consumers doing about it? They are taking it right to the Internet. Will this help or hurt?

gethuman.com, in particular, provides a community for consumers to exchange information. Walt Tetschner, the director of the Get Human Web site, is an engineer by trade and now a consumer advocate. The Web site has been up for about two and a half years and has 10,000 visitors a day.

In May, the site also began asking visitors to rank those companies with great customer service. It then lists them on its Web site.

Airlines now getting award from GetHuman

The first group of companies have been given recognition by GetHuman in the airline business.

"The airlines that are listed below have earned membership in the gethuman Great Customer Service Club by providing superior customer service. Out of over 30 airlines that are listed on the gethuman web site, these elite airlines are the only ones that have received the votes of consumers testifying to the high quality of customer service that they are providing.

We congratulate these fine airlines that have earned membership in the GetHuman Great Customer Service Club and encourage them to continue to provide excellent customer service. (http://www.gethuman.com/GCSC_Airlines.htm)"

The winners are:

• Alaska Airlines
• JetBlue
• Southwest
• Hawaiian
• Virgin Atlantic
  

GetHuman Great Customer Service Club - Banking

If you haven't already noticed, GetHuman is now focusing on the stars of great customer service. This website mostly known for helping consumers find ways directly to humans, is now using it's consumer driven rating and ranking engine to help show the best.

The first vertical that they have started to recognize is the banking sector.

"The banks that are listed below have earned membership in the gethuman Great Customer Service Club by providing superior customer service. Out of over 30 banks that are listed on the gethuman web site, these elite banks are the only ones that have received the votes of consumers testifying to the high quality of customer service that they are providing.

We congratulate these fine banks that have earned membership in the gethuman Great Customer Service Club and encourage them to continue to provide excellent customer service." (read more)

The banks listed include:

• Commerce Bank
• Frost Bank
• RBC Royal Bank
• First Direct

What we don't see is what the user feedback was to raise these companies to this stature. Also it would be nice to see how often this category will be ranked.

Even though this is a first for GetHuman, it is still a step in the right direction of encouraging great customer service.

Don't give your customers hammers

Last October, a 75-year-old Manassas woman who got so fed up with her cable company and their automated phone system she that she attacked their office with a hammer.

Here's hoping that you never come to that. But if hearing things like, "please select from the following six options," makes your cringe then ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 is on your side with tip to help you get past the automation and get to the human.

"(The automated phone systems) are setup to save money as a cost saving device, they are not set up for ease of use or even to help customers in many cases," explained Voice Automation Analyst Walter Rolandi.

(source)

Meeting GetHuman's Core Principals with Guided Technology

Let's take a look at the GetHuman core principals and talk about how new thinking and the Spoken Guided technology can actually provide a great customer experience for all customers:

GETHUMAN PRINCIPALS and HOW TO MAKE THEM WORK IN A CALL CENTER

• Humans first - In cases where a human is available, a human should quickly answer the call and determine the caller's need. If appropriate, the human can offer a self-service option to accomplish tasks and thereby merely act as a natural language interface to the system's Main Menu. Callers who prefer to use automation will elect to do so. Those requiring or otherwise preferring human assistance will have it.

How to make this work: Use a Guided Self-Service option. In Guided Self-Service every call, by definition, is answered and monitored by a human. The human just happens to be totally aided by automation, but they still have control over the call. So, you could answer every call with "How may I help you?" and have the combination of automation and human get the caller to the right place every time.

• Make it easy - The system should be so easy, convenient and efficient to use that people will willingly choose to use it. As a rule of thumb, such systems should permit the user to accomplish tasks faster than by interaction with a human.

How to make this work: Have you ever given your credit card number to a live agent who wasn't paying attention? My record for repeating my credit card number is 4 times to a live agent. If you tell a machine the "accurate" information once and the combination of technology and human agent assistance will get it right every time, without re-prompting the customer. Also, it is easier to just talk naturally, so Guided system allows natural speech, un-constrained sentences - since there is a live agent to provide context to the automation.

• Efficient prompts - No prompt content should be included unless it improves efficiency of task completion for the user. "Legalese" should not be included unless it is absolutely required by law. Cliche' phrases, which have become meaningless to consumers due to overuse and lack of trust of phone systems, should be avoided. Examples include: "Your call is important to us." "Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed." "You can access our website to answer most questions."

How to make this work: The easiest way to ask a question is to mimic a live agent. Live agents know the best way to get the information they are looking for. Automation systems by themselves cannot handle open ended replies from callers very well. In a Guided environment all the responses have a live agent backup to provide help.

• Systems are not humans - Automated systems that try to sound human can be patronizing to consumers. When a consumer calls with a serious issue, they do not want to be greeted by overly friendly and cheery personas. Avoid using personas such as these that will annoy callers.

How to make this work: Using a Guided approach allows for a smoother interaction, because it just "gets it". This can be used with or without a persona.

• Listen to your customers - Regularly survey users on call quality. Respond to frequently heard complaints in a public, visible forum, indicating what you are changing to address the frustration. Organizations should use this data to trend improvement over time, to bonus call center executives, to impact support representatives' compensation and training, and to benchmark against the industry.

How to make this work: The Guided approach allows you to listen to customers in real-time, fix their problems, and provide feedback to the system on what should be fixed so it doesn't happen again.

• Logical flow - Self-service applications should have logical flow. For example, it is unacceptable to obtain a caller's account number, and then ask if he/she would like to open an account.

How to make this work: Live call scripts are very good and have been optimized over thousands of calls. A Guided approach allows an organization to just use the best parts of live scripts to handle calls, since each call has a live attendant when needed to provide help.

For more information about Guide technology, contact Spoken Communications at www.spoken.com

Solution to gethuman standard - making it really work with Guided Self-Service

In an article by Ian Jacobs (Analyst at Frost & Sullivan) titled, "Gethuman? Get Real." on DestinationCRM (read original here), he asserts that all callers should not be treated equally. His argument is based on the "Core Principals" that define the GetHuman standard for handling callers in a call center.

Ian writes,

"If companies treat every customer equally, customers are actually the ones who suffer in the long run. Companies that do not treat their preeminent customers better than the workaday customers will soon lose those more profitable customers, and that would be the start of a downward trend."

I agree with Ian, that if companies are going to stick with old technology and ideas then they are forced to meet out service in this way. However, if a company truly wants to be competetive, then they should make every effort to seek out new ideas and methods to lure customers away from competitors who stick with old ideas.

Let's take a look at the GetHuman core principals and talk about how new thinking and Spoken's Guided technology can actually provide a great customer experience for all customers:

GETHUMAN PRINCIPALS and HOW TO MAKE THEM WORK IN A CALL CENTER

• Humans first - In cases where a human is available, a human should quickly answer the call and determine the caller's need. If appropriate, the human can offer a self-service option to accomplish tasks and thereby merely act as a natural language interface to the system's Main Menu. Callers who prefer to use automation will elect to do so. Those requiring or otherwise preferring human assistance will have it.

How to make this work: Use a Guided Self-Service option. In Guided Self-Service every call, by definition, is answered and monitored by a human. The human just happens to be totally aided by automation, but they still have control over the call. So, you could answer every call with "How may I help you?" and have the combination of automation and human get the caller to the right place every time.

• Make it easy - The system should be so easy, convenient and efficient to use that people will willingly choose to use it. As a rule of thumb, such systems should permit the user to accomplish tasks faster than by interaction with a human.

How to make this work: Have you ever given your credit card numer to a live agent who wasn't paying attention? My record for repeating my credit card number is 4 times to a live agent. If you tell a machine the "accurate" information once and the combination of technology and human agent assistance will get it right every time, without re-prompting the customer. Also, it is easier to just talk naturally, so Guided system allows natural speech, un-constrained sentences - since there is a live agent to provide context to the automation.

• Efficient prompts - No prompt content should be included unless it improves efficiency of task completion for the user. "Legalese" should not be included unless it is absolutely required by law. Cliché phrases, which have become meaningless to consumers due to overuse and lack of trust of phone systems, should be avoided. Examples include: "Your call is important to us." "Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed." "You can access our website to answer most questions."

How to make this work: The easiest way to ask a question is to mimic a live agent. Live agents know the best way to get the information they are looking for. Automation systems by themselves cannot handle open ended replies from callers very well. In a Guided environment all the responses have a live agent backup to provide help.

• Systems are not humans - Automated systems that try to sound human can be patronizing to consumers. When a consumer calls with a serious issue, they do not want to be greeted by overly friendly and cheery personas. Avoid using personas such as these that will annoy callers.

How to make this work: Using a Guided approach allows for a smoother interaction, because it just "gets it". This can be used with or without a persona.

• Listen to your customers - Regularly survey users on call quality. Respond to frequently heard complaints in a public, visible forum, indicating what you are changing to address the frustration. Organizations should use this data to trend improvement over time, to bonus call center executives, to impact support representatives' compensation and training, and to benchmark against the industry.

How to make this work: The Guided approach allows you to listen to customers in real-time, fix their problems, and provide feedback to the system on what should be fixed so it doesn't happen again.

• Logical flow - Self-service applications should have logical flow. For example, it is unacceptable to obtain a caller's account number, and then ask if he/she would like to open an account.

How to make this work: Live call scripts are very good and have been optimized over thousands of calls. A Guided approach allows an organization to just use the best parts of live scripts to handle calls, since each call has a live attendant when needed to provide help.