CX: When Automation Goes Bad

Forrester famously reported that 89% of companies intend to compete on the basis of Customer Experience (CX). Customer Experience Management has become a horizontal capability that governs cross-functional teams to not only deliver a central brand experience, but to improve satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. So much that the Chief Marketing Officer will now often report into the Chief Experience Officer (which is a role that didn’t exist 5 years ago). At the same time, the World Economic Forum said last fall that 50% of employers plan to step up automation at their firms[1], which makes sense. In the days of COVID where every organization has been hobbled with shifting cost structures, adopting new services and support requirements, and incurring compound revenue losses, businesses are being forced to accelerate and compress their timelines for automation. Brands need to cut outlays, lower cost to serve and reduce labor charges. The question remains, is it possible to retain quality of CX in the face of rising automation (inherently less understanding, flexible, which is to say... less human)?

Here’s something I recently experienced with Hertz car rental, which might answer that question. I rented a sedan near an airport and at a rest stop 4 hours later, the anti-theft security was somehow triggered. The battery worked fine but the car was bricked. The Roadside Assistance Team promptly called a tow truck to pick-up the car, which I thought would be the end of the story -- I only wondered if the chargeback would graciously cover the full rental cost. Unfortunately, the local branch manager failed to scan the vehicle and so Hertz believed I still had the vehicle in my possession. 4 days later I began to receive automated phone calls notifying me of my critically overdue rental, pleading with me to return the vehicle, lest they have to take recovery action at my expense and suspend my rental privileges. It’s now been 2 weeks, at this point I’m receiving 3 automated calls a day, placing 5 or 6 more, and am no closer to resolution. I fear for the late charges that continue to accrue, I’m concerned this could affect my credit score, I’m even worried they could have me wrongfully arrested or sued (according to Google, this actually happens).

What I’ve learned over this time is that I’m experiencing a very specific use case according to their systems and protocols, and those systems and protocols are fundamentally incapable of handling my use case. For example, Roadside Assistance created a case # when they first called AAA to tow the vehicle, so that part of the organization knows and agrees that the car was towed and dropped off at a branch. But Customer Service can’t see that case # because they lack access to those Roadside Service systems. While Customer Service did agree to call AAA and were able to confirm the vehicle is back in (vicinity of) Hertz’s possession, the Vehicle Department can’t see the notes created by Roadside Assistance or by Customer Service. And to make everything even more farcical, these departments tell me the only way they can reach the local branch is by calling them. On same phone number I would use. While everyone concedes that the branch doesn’t pick-up their phone (which is probably by design, as a cost-out measure to push customers to self-serve on the website). So it's become my job to convince the organization that they're in fact in possession of the very car they're pressing me to return. I’m now 2 weeks into this ordeal, I can see no end in sight and it’s become clear within my circumstances that their customer support ecosystem was essentially bricked, just like my car.

The point here isn’t to expose Hertz as a deficient organization, we know they were on the verge of bankruptcy just last year and so we can certainly expect a fair degree of cost-cutting. The point is that a company’s CX is only as good as the specific experiences which they dictate, through their operations, protocols and systems. And the systems of record and systems of engagement (customer, employee, supplier, affiliate, etc.) their CX weighs on will need to communicate with one another, otherwise, they’re saddling people with responsibility to clean up the mess through high-touch, low value interventions like phone, email, cross-departmental appeals. Ultimately if your business requires actual people to fill in the gaps amidst your increasing automation, that means the automation clearly isn’t working and the business will inevitably fall apart for a significant swath of your customers.

Zendesk research[2] tells us that half of customers say they would switch to a competitor after just one bad experience, while in the case of more than one bad experience, that number snowballs to 80%. We already knew that poor experience will send the customer walking, but that seems to be the case now more than ever. Customers have become fickle, angry and emboldened, by the Internet, by COVID, by these modern times, and where we spend our discretionary income has become the last bastion of control in the world today. Gartner goes a step further, advising how it’s not just about customer satisfaction but moreso the customer effort. 96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction become disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience. And cost to serve, one proxy for profitability, is tied in as well: Low-effort experiences reduce costs by decreasing up to 40% of repeat calls, 50% of escalations and 54% of channel switching[3].

I have to believe Hertz is aware of this use case since my very first scan of their Instagram postings revealed in the comments another customer experiencing the same thing. Now why that should happen has been on my mind. I’d expect that any company can identify broken experiences but many will allow them based on the business case (frequent but expensive to fix) or the use case’s novelty (infrequent, not worth fixing). My own experience has left me wondering how CX can be so broken, and I’ve concluded the obvious, that some degree of customer attrition is palatable for a business like Hertz, some margin of error will be factored into the cost of running any business.

At the end of the day automation is good, but when it fails, it becomes extremely bad. I haven’t decided where I stand on the future of this relationship because I’m still waiting on Hertz to get a handle on the situation and offer some type of remediation (for the wasted hours of time and frustration). Which might not happen, and I'm prepared for that. Ultimately, we’re all adults here, I understand how businesses are managed and I can only hope that the company is aware of this use case within their practice. I hope they understand why it happens, and that they've just made a measured decision (for benefit of the shareholders) that the business case doesn’t justify the investment. Because as frustrating as it might be to live within such an experience, without justification, a disappointing customer experience becomes downright existential.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-05-04/covid-automation-robots-trends-effects-on-workers

[2] https://www.zendesk.com/blog/why-companies-should-invest-in-the-customer-experience/

[3] https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/unveiling-the-new-and-improved-customer-effort-score