Narrowing now widening your service gap with customers
I recently had an experience that encapsulated so many different bad experiences as a customer I was struggling to encapsulate it. When I sat back and reflected on it though it came down to 3 things.
- Every time I spoke to someone on the phone (4 calls to customer service, and live chat, and eventually in-store) I got told it was a problem on their side that meant they hadn't processed my refund. And they will escalate it. Tip 1 - a customer doesn't care that your systems or processes are crap. That does not help them.
- During each interaction someone promised various things. From escalating it (turns out they didn't), to emailing me or calling me back to update me. They never did. Tip 2 - do not promise something to a customer that you are not going to do.
- I finally got my refund after 6 weeks, after spending nearly 5 hours chasing, and eventually having to go to a store. Where the branch manager told me it was my fault as I should have called them. I pointed out that their website had a ton of options to contact customer services, but never mentioned calling the store. Tip 3 - do not tell the customer what they should have done rather than fixing their problem.
In summary:
- All the way through they widened rather than narrowed the customer expectation gap.
- No steps added any value to the customer.
- It was clear they had designed some great technology for giving customers multiple channels to communicate with their customers, but they had not designed the processes for the customers.
- Needing to escalate issues such as refunds for customers, rather than being able to do them live is a great indicator you are getting it wrong.
It really is simple. Find ways to actively listen, and fix and solve things for customers when they contact you, by whatever channel. When you design your processes, test them against this principle.
#servicedesign #customer #customervalue #servicegap
