A CorvisaCloud second annual customer service survey reported an improvement in customer service since 2013; while that is indeed good news, the bad news is that even though businesses profess that ‘the customer is king’, they don’t seem to be doing enough to really wow them.
According to the survey, cable companies continue to be touted as the worst customer service offenders while the hospitality industry appears to be considered as the best provider of customer service by at least one-third of the survey respondents. Also, small businesses seem to have an edge over large companies when it comes to providing good customer service.
It’s not that businesses are not aware that customer service is a top priority and their concerns and frustration need to be addressed; for some strange reason good customer service just doesn’t appear to be the norm.
The survey report cites ‘unknowledgeable and inarticulate agents’ as a problem area. Nearly 49 percent of the respondents claim call center agents are uninformed and difficult to understand and don’t appear to be pay any real attention to customer complaints- they just deliver a standard robotic reply that leaves customers just where they are. And as if that were not bad enough, agents tend to put customers on hold. When hold times increase, the disgruntled customer, not willing to wait any longer, just hangs up. Multichannelism has caught on, but in spite of different channels of interaction, phone calls still remain supreme- contact centers must remember that.
Further, when calls are transferred, customer information is not; customers have to repeat everything more than once, and this merely adds to the frustration that is already building up.
So what’s the takeaway for contact center managers? They do need to up the ante on customer service!
Matt Lautz, president and CIO, CorvisaCloud believes that contact centers need to invest in the right people and technology to make sure they're wowing customers instead of just covering the basics. Agents need to adopt a straightforward and smart communication style, need to be honest with customers, keep promises that are made and treat customers –‘easy or difficult’-right. The rest will automatically fall into place.
CorvisaCloud, which has customer success at heart, claims to have the ‘know-how’ to help companies get a jumpstart by helping them work smarter, save money and make customers happier.