Hey Businesses! Are You There? It’s Me, Your Customer

Over the last two weeks, I found myself in a situation I usually avoid—calling customer service. As a general rule, I am a self-service type of customer. If I can do it myself online, I will. I’m basically the dream customer for all companies that want to direct their customers to digital. So, when I actually dial a number to speak to someone, it means I’ve exhausted all the self-service options and genuinely need a human to intervene and help me.

Imagine my shock and horror when I found myself needing to call three different companies for help over the last two weeks…and was treated horribly. One agent yelled at me for asking a question about their process. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was told there was no one to escalate the call to. The second company, the agent, hung up on me mid-call. I thought, “Surely, they’ll call me back.” But no, they didn’t. The third company, I spent being transferred back and forth between departments, and two hours later, my issue still wasn’t resolved.

This left me wondering: do companies even care about customer experience? Or is all the focus on digital customer experience that the human interaction side of customer experience is ignored?

The Broken Promise of Self-Service

The idea was simple: let’s get customers to do simple tasks for themselves online so that we can free up customer service agents to help with more complex tasks. Digital-first, human when it matters. It sounded promising, but we’re seeing a different reality now. When “digital first” fails a customer has to navigate a maze of complicated automated responses to access a human, then wait obscene amounts of hours to speak with a human, only to final make contact with a human that is either prepared or willing to help.

I am reluctant to believe that all customer service agents are crap at their job and not willing to help. Perhaps if it were a few of them, but given every interaction I’ve had and based on what I hear from others, this seems a systemic problem rather than an individual problem. So, I went looking for some answers.

Unhappy Employees = Frustrated Customers

As a Design Thinker and behavioral scientist, I am always looking to understand the why behind the pain points. Fueled with frustration, I went online searching for answers. It didn’t take long to see why I was treated this way—the companies I dealt with had become terrible workplaces. Glassdoor reviews painted a picture of unhappy employees dealing with return-to-office mandates, relentless cost-cutting measures, endless restructures, and a lack of recognition.

Contact centers are not for the faint of heart. I should know many moons ago, I helped set two of them up and ran them for a short time. It was exhausting work and I didn’t survive for long. They are loud places where every minute of your time is accounted for…call after call, there is a customer needing help, and you have to help them within a certain number of minutes to get on to the next call because your paycheck depends on speed or how many calls you’ve taken in a day. It is not an easy job. Now, imagine working in that environment where you are worried about the recent round of layoffs, and here comes another restructure. Oh, and there is a new process/procedure to learn, but you only get 10 minutes to learn it and be proficient before you are back on calls again.

On top of that, you used to be able to work from home a few days a week (even though you managed to do it everyday from home during Covid), but okay, you go in for a few days, at least the coffee is good. But then, they replaced the good coffee with something that barely passes for coffee. At least you could hit the gym a few times a week, and the company would pay for it, but that’s a benefit they also took away.

If you think I’m making these things up, I’m not. They are real stories that people have shared with me as I’ve been exploring this topic.

Richard Branson said it best when he said, "If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers" (I’m paraphrasing here). I think what we see in customer service is the inverse of this, which is painful. Stressed, unhappy employees can’t deliver a good customer experience.

And let’s face it, these days, most employees don’t feel “taken care of,”…at least from the data I’ve been collecting.

The Financial Impact: Why Poor CX is Bad for Business

On the surface, it is easy to dismiss poor customer experience but here are a few numbers to consider.

• 53% of customers stop or reduce spending with a company following a negative experience
• $3.7 Trillion of Global Sales is at risk due to bad customer experience

In organizations, we talk about the lack of growth. So, here is a question: what % of that $3.7 Trillion might be impacting your company’s lack of growth?

So, that’s some food for thought on the macro-view, but what about the micro-view?

Well, I cannot speak for all customers, but let’s use my experience as a case study.

After nearly a decade of being a customer with the first company, I have closed my account. This is the one that I am most appalled with because, after all those years of loyalty and the first time I contacted their contact center, it just isn't cool to be treated that way. I would rather go without this service altogether than give them any more of my money.

The second company, I am only sticking around because this isn’t a service I can go without, and there isn’t an alternative yet. As soon as there is, I’m gone. The third one, I’m going to give them another chance, only because, when I filled out the customer survey, someone contacted me, apologized, fixed the issue, and offered me a free month of service. So, here, I’m willing to see how it goes, but I am keeping an eye out on my options.

Okay, so I know I’m just one person, and my leaving isn’t going to put this company out of business. However, how many of my friends and family do you think now know about my experience? What do you think will happen the next time someone posts on social media asking for a recommendation for a service?

Something we fail to realize time and time again is that in 2024 and beyond, our most valuable marketing asset, are our customers.

Where to From Here?

It’s easy for me as a customer to point out fault…but I am no ordinary customer. As a human-centered designer and behavioral scientist, I help organizations with these types of problems. So, here is my advice for organizations who want to move beyond this stuck point:

• The first step is to decide if customer service is worth saving and if you are willing to do what it takes to improve it. This means committing resources, time, and effort to improve both employee and customer experiences.
• Next, listen to your employees. The people doing the job actually have a good sense of what’s working and what’s not. If you do employee engagement surveys, start by reading the comments employees have already provided.
• Be your own customer! Try to buy and return something as if you were a customer. Then, try calling your contact center for help. Then ask yourself, would I want to be a customer of this company?
• Sit in their seat! One of the banks I worked at required non-customer-facing employees to spend time in a branch or contact center. This is a great way to understand the pain points and discover where improvements are needed.

Podcast Round-Up

Want to learn more about why your customer experience will fail if you ignore your employee experience? Check out Episode 37 of the Design Thinker Podcast.

Want to learn more about creating a winning customer experience? Check out Episode 36 of the Design Thinker Podcast.

Hack of the Month

Use empathy mapping (commonly applied to customers) on your employees. What do they think, feel, hear, and need during their workday? This can uncover areas for improvement in tools, communication, or support.

Till next time,

Dani

Hello, I'm Dani. I help leaders unlock their organization's potential by identifying and moving beyond the stuck points holding their organizations back. My career has spanned Fortune 500 companies, large corporations, and government agencies across the USA and NZ. Ready to make stuff happen in your organization with evidence based practices? Let's chat! Book your discovery call today https://calendly.com/dani-chesson