Reducing Customer Effort - Making it Easy to Get Solutions

Do you remember the Staples campaign "That Was Easy!"?

When it comes to customer support, you want every customer coming away thinking, "well, that was easy!" It is called reducing the customer effort. Your company may even track a Customer Effort Score (CES) #customereffort much like it does with CSAT.

Following are best practices that the best support people employ in every customer interaction to reduce the customers' effort, and deliver solutions without making it difficult. From the series "A Guide to Being the Best Customer Support Person"

How You Make it Easy for Your Customers

• You want each case to be an effortless experience for the customer.
• You get all the information you need upfront via a call or 1 comprehensive case update. You don't make customer service difficult by asking 1 question at a time, back-and-forth via your case updates. Asking questions, reclarifying info, slowly coming to the right understanding. You are not the sort of person that does all they can to avoid a call, rather you understand a 15 minute call can cut through all the confusion and noise to get what could have taken days via case comments.
• You make it a great customer experience by clearly explaining what you have provided, what the customer should do, how they use that info, and the next steps they should take so they do not have to ask. You don't make it hard by just sending them documentation or knowledge articles, expecting "they will figure it out."
• As I explain throughout this series, sending the customer articles quickly is a best practice. KCS is how we deliver solutions, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do that. Make sure that a customer doesn't feel like you have 'given them homework' rather than the solution they were looking for.
• You always offer to 'jump on a call with them' to go over anything you provided.
• You make it easy because you can predict what a customer will need and you get it before they ask for it, or include it as "additional information" in your update.
• Have you ever given someone an answer, only for it to be quickly followed up with a new question? You answer that, and once again, you get another new question. Predicting the impact your update will have on the customer is a skill that is learnt in time, but it is one you do need to develop if you don't want to frustrate the customer as well as yourself. A customer will greatly appreciate it when you provide an answer, along with 'additional information' that is closely related and now becomes the customer's new focus. Providing relevant, targeted, helpful knowledge articles can save time, effort, and at times, days of going back and forth (in other words you made it really easy!)
• You patiently walk a customer through complex issues via live calls/meetings and not painfully via multiple case comments. Giving a customer a lengthy technical document or knowledge article to make sense of is never going to be seen as "making it easy" for them. But if you give it to them and say, "I'd like to arrange a call with you and step you through this at a time that suits you" will make them happy. You will find advanced customers or partners will love you for giving them what they need, and making it as easy as possible to execute on it. 60-75% of the time I found most people would kindly say "thanks for the information. This is actually all I need for now. If I need a call I'll let you know." In their mind you made it easy even without having the call!
• You give regular, timely updates, so they don’t have to ask for them.?If you have ever had a customer TYPING IN ALL CAPS asking for an update, you definitely are not making it easy for them in this area. While we do not always have substantive updates to give customers, being communicative, giving small regular updates reassures the customer that you are there working for them behind the scenes. They don't feel like they are the one chasing you down each time they need an update. That is surely to generate a low customer effort score (CES). And don't fall into the habit of just copying & pasting the same canned messages over and over. That also is guaranteed to generate a low CES. As I have recommended in this series, use canned updates, but always personalize them with a little bit of you, making each one just a little different so as to not look robotic like an AI bot or Chatgpt.

The Easy Button

The concept of having an "easy button" is one I have used with many support engineers over the years to get them thinking about ways to improve how they deliver support, with the goal of making it easy for themselves and the customer.

I ask, "thinking about your job, if you could invent an "easy button" for anything you have to do, what would the button do?"

The idea is to get you thinking about things you do day-to-day that could be made easier, such as. Use creativity and innovation, and don't limit yourself in any way (remember it's an imaginary easy button so it can do whatever you need it to do!):

• Repetitive tasks that may be easy but add little value and could be automated.
• Difficult diagnostic steps that a script could be built to perform.
• Tools or new technology that could gather technical and diagnostic info from a customers' instance without you doing it manually.
• Poor process that is slowing you down or making something that should be quick and simple, complex and full of red tape.
• Automation to case workflow.
• Better transparency for the customer as to what is happening...
• ...and on and on we could go. The point being, there is almost certainly something you and your support team is doing that could do with an "easy button."

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Making it easy by reducing the effort the customer needs to use.

A common question that can be used to measure the customer's perspective of how much effort they needed to make is: "To what degree do you agree with the following statement: XYZ.co made it easy for me to get my solution." On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being Difficult through 5 being Very Easy. (Some recommend a 7 point scale, but I prefer all KPIs to use a 5 point scale)

The important part of this is not how easy YOU think it was for the customer, but how easy the customer thought it was based on their expectations. There are many great articles on using CES as one of your most important KPIs. I like to use it even more so than CSAT.

I have many years of data to confirm the claim that CES is as-good-as CSAT, but better identifies what needs to change to make it easier for your customers to work with you and the business.

Knowing what they thought was hard or complex enables support management to determine what can be done to make that easier. Making your processes, tools, and programs easier to use is more tangible, physical, quantifiable than "improving a customer's feelings", which is essentially what CSAT is measuring.

I can guarantee that you will never have an unhappy customer because... "you made it too easy for them." So focus on making it easy so they can get back to their business and not waiting on yours. You'll be sure to also receive great CSAT.

More in the Series

#business #innovation #management #technology #creativity #careers #chatgpt #AI #cx #service ?#customerservice #customersupport #customersuccess #customerexperience #support #knowledge

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Whois?Anthony Johnson

A former small business owner with 20+ years in large global customer support organizations. I have first-hand experience working with hundreds of support professionals, the common mistakes made, and the lessons learned. This enables me to speak with authority on the best practices that proved successful in enabling support teams to thrive and deliver a customer experience that results in high CSAT and low Customer Effort.?

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