In today's fast moving economy and fast paced lifestyle, time is one of the most precious things we have. We are all learning to cherish our time increasingly with each passing day. If saving time makes customers happy, then wasting their time is guaranteed to make them unhappy. Wasting a customer's time is bad customer service, yet we see examples of how companies waste their customers' time every day: When calling a customer care line, a caller is asked to call another number. This is a common scenario when several companies are merged under one brand name. The customer does not care that the company is running two different systems. That is the company's problem and not the customers. The solution is to empower all customer contact staff to take ownership of the problem on behalf of the customer and act decisively to seek quick resolution to the satisfaction of the customer. Expecting customers to navigate lengthy automated telephone response menus. This is usually implemented to save the company money and save the customer time that they would otherwise spend waiting on hold for a representative. Unfortunately, these menus often leave the customer frustrated. The message to customers is clear: "we value our time more than yours." Yet telephone response systems can save customers time if deployed carefully. The solution is to test them from the customers' perspective. Always give the customer the option of speaking with a live person at the start of the call; don't wait until the end of the menu to give them this option. Alternatively, put the caller in the queue for live assistance and then give them options for self-service while they are waiting. Waiting on hold. Call queuing must be one of the most inefficient methods of customer service from the customer's perspective. Why not give them the option to be called back when they reach the top of the queue? This allows the customer to use their time wisely and do something else while they are waiting. (Companies might even save money on 800 line charges). Having a customer wait on hold for half an hour or more and then accidentally disconnecting the line when the customer care representative tries to connect to the call. Never intentional, but incredibly frustrating for the customer who has now lost thirty minutes of their life! Can the company ever give those thirty minutes back? How much value does your company place on thirty minutes of a customer's life? Not training customer support staff effectively. Customers know when they are talking to someone that does not understand their problem. They are then making a judgment about your company. What conclusions should they draw? How do you want them to perceive your company? How can a CSR get the right help for the customer? How are they empowered to help the customer? The customer waits on hold and finally gets through to a live person only to be told the computer is down and asked to call back when the system is back up and working. Again, this company just wasted precious minutes of a customer's life that they can never get back. The least this company could do is to call the customer back when the computer is working again. Don't ask your customers to be both forgiving and psychic! Letting a customer shop for merchandise and getting to the checkout page before you tell them it is out of stock. Letting customers order out-of-stock merchandise. Having a customer repeat a question or problem to more than one person. If your CSR's are properly empowered, a customer should never have to repeat anything to anybody. Asking customers to leave their homes to return merchandise. If they bought product from you for convenience and speed, don't make it inconvenient and slow to return product to you. The customer sees purchases and returns as two halves of the same transaction. If you make any part of it difficult, you taint the whole process in the mind of the customer.
A Customer Centric approach requires companies to be considerate of their customers' time. One way to do this is to place a value on their time. How many of the above scenarios would be tolerated if the companies concerned placed even a limited value, say just a dollar a minute, on the time of their customers? If companies had to pay their customers a dollar for each minute of time they wasted, we would soon see some very imaginative ways to serve customers without wasting their time. Becoming Customer Centric means seeing your entire company from the customer's perspective. As you do this, think of your customer as an expensive lawyer you are paying by the hour to shop at your store and to use your services. Be frugal with their time. Developing a customer centric approach to e-Business FREE NEWSLETTER, click here |
