Real People Helping Real People
WTF? ðŸ’
I’m glad you asked. In this age of support self-service options, IVRs, chatbots, knowledge bases, email trouble tickets, message boards, and social media support; we have faded the power of real-time human resolution. The last thing that should be happening to your frustrated upset and most valuable customer is to be trudging in all of the automation before finding a pathway to the real person. We need to get real about how this impacts a customer’s trust and future loyalty to the brand.
Real Talk 🗣
Access to humans and self-service should exist totally independent of each other. I don’t care what any study says or what the call volume statics say, don’t buy anything other than the fact that frustrated customers want easy access to a human that can help them in real-time. Anything that suggests differently is surely a lie. If it is easier for a frustrated customer to send a tweet than to get a company’s human agent on the phone, prepare to have your brand slaughtered. It is nothing for a frustrated customer to give up on getting help and assail your brand online.
GO HARD or GO HOME 💥
Do everything possible to lessen the time the customer has to change their mind when they consider reaching out for help. The automated options are fine, but should really be a secondary line of defense for customers that are willing to make that choice.
Aside from reducing the time for the customer to reach real human care, there is another important time to consider. Time to full resolution. To lessen this time, you need well-trained customer service warriors. Companies should have no barriers to how far a frontline agent can go to make a resolution happen. Nobody should take that personally. Processes should be sharp, super simplified and flexible. Agents need to be super empowered to fully own and resolve. Customers should feel as if talking to the agent is just as valuable as speaking to the CEO.
Supercharge the Frontline Agents 🔌⚡
Useless barriers and policies have got to go. Throw them out. Does your company have a policy that requires refund approvals? That increases the time to resolution. Let the agent do the right thing. If you hired a good agent, they don’t need your permission to do that. Does your agent need certain permissions to talk to higher levels or teams on other lines of business? Ludicrous logic that increases the time to resolution. You can’t be customer centric and customer-obsessed without real empowerment. The resolution does not need this type of government. At all.
(Notice: Views expressed herein are independently those of Amiel Greathouse. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Amiel Greathouse’s employer. Absolutely no endorsement of any kind is implied.)
