Sorting It Out

Last week’s post Can I Interest You In Serving Me? laid out the huge cost and inconvenience of UK customer service and I’m sure similar problems exist in every other country. What are the main root causes and how do we go about fixing them??

Attitude

Any complaint is a failure. It is a failure of delivery of the promise or service, a failure of communication with the customer or, in some circumstances, a failure to manage ‘difficult’ customers and bad actors.?

Any company that boasts about having a great customer complaints department has got it the wrong way round unless they are the engine of fixing the sources of those complaints. Quite often, they are fixing individual issues but the learning from those complaints fails to make it back into the redesign of processes and the correction of the root cause of the problem.?

Larger companies are happy to accept a far higher level of complaints than they should because the full costs of the problem are not borne by the company. The cost of complaining e.g. time on the phone, lack of utility, etc to the customer is not fully shown on the Cost of Service line. Disputed resolutions may go to an Ombudsman and the restitutions compensate the user for their extreme troubles but there is often not sufficient incentive to create significant change.?

Imagine if regulators were able to fine companies a million pounds for a complaint or you were able to charge the company you were ringing for the time you spent waiting at the rate they pay their customer service agents. Would companies take complaints more seriously and fix their processes? You bet they would.?

Failure of Delivery?

Customer processes need to be bulletproof. In increasingly digital environments, that means technology and user experiences that work for the customer, 24/7 without bugs. Where there is a human interface, frontline staff need to be trained and empowered to sort out customer queries and problems, as far as humanly possible.?

As businesses grow, new products and services need to dovetail into these processes in a seamless way. This requires extensive testing and should involve those within the business and, in controlled circumstances, customers.?

Ideally, the technology is in place to identify errors and systems down problems before they result in a complaint. Those that make it through need to be actioned as a matter of urgency.

Demand Management

Changes in product, services and channels need to be reflected in the service offered. With the rise of e-commerce and online shopping, customer service departments may be dealing with a higher volume of queries and complaints than in the past, which can lead to longer wait times or less personalised service. My own bank is still saying there are long wait times due to COVID-19!?

There’s no excuse for a lack of investment in providing the correct level of service. That is your true cost of service. Furthermore those processes need to change as the business grows and develops e.g. a new model, new delivery service etc.?

Communications?

A common source of complaints is a failure to communicate properly with customers on key issues both with communications e.g. emails and online e.g. in an app. Quite simply, customers do not fully understand what they are buying, what they are paying and what the terms of service are.?

This is quite often a failure to understand the innovation adopters lifecycle. Early customers tend to be tech savvy, more willing to experiment, less price sensitive, good payers etc.?

As demand for a product grows, the ‘quality’ of buyers goes down. They become more sceptical, more price sensitive and less knowledgeable about a product or service. They may have a poorer credit rating.?

Many large businesses employ people who have little in common with whole segments of their market in terms of background, education etc. What is easy to understand if you work in an industry is not always clear to users.Despite having a physics degree and being highly numerate, a UK utility bill remains a source of mystery as prices change and a look at Facebook groups show huge numbers of educated people feel likewise.?

Hence, it’s vital to understand customer segmentation i.e. the differences between distinct groups of customers and to ensure that communications around pricing, contract etc are transparent and easy to understand rather than hidden in terms of condition, which no one reads. Communication also comes into the spoken word. If a customer is struggling to understand what is being said, then it is a potential source of a future complaint.?

Every business should be reviewing their customer communications on a regular basis and customer complaints should drive their development.This should be done in conjunction with frontline staff who deal with customer queries and complaints and, ideally tested, with customers.

Bad Actors

Not everyone is a ‘good’ customer. Some customers are not a good fit for the product or service and this potentially ends up in either complaints or in lost revenue. In extremis, some customers are bad actors who are looking to game the company for free usage or to exploit any loopholes.?

I did some work at one company that was so desperate for growth in subscriber numbers that it was possible to sign up, not pay anything for a year, have the service terminated then to be rung back by a ‘Win-back’ team a few weeks later and asked to rejoin!?

It’s important to say that this was not deliberate but a result of building processes that were designed for people who quite happily paid their bills every month. Letters to people owing money were oblique to the point that it was not immediately obvious that the account was in arrears! Needless to say that the process was reengineered with clearer information about pricing, payment details and a stronger intervention with a shorter time frame.?

Managing out poor fit customers is an important exercise and one that is best thought about earlier rather than later.

People

In a world where there are less and less people to talk to, those that you do employ are becoming more important than ever. Chatbots may be able to answer simple problems and queries but customer facing employees in your organisation are becoming increasingly important as differentiators.?

They need to be trained and empowered to resolve customer issues as soon as possible but also to play a key part in fixing the root causes of those issues. Rather than ‘reducing headcount’, businesses should be looking at how to deploy those resources to maximum effect within the business.?

Conclusions?

Businesses need bulletproof processes and clear communications which grow not just with demand but with the maturity of their clients. In addition, they need people that both help the customer to resolve the complaint but to help the company fix the problems that caused it.?

In an ideal world, there should be no complaints but, in practice, businesses need to have processes to resolve complaints and should develop a meaningful set of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) around reducing the volume, cost, and time to resolve.?

Until next time?

Pete?

p.s. If you’re a business struggling to get a handle on customer complaints or want to cut them out in the first place, I can help! If you want to have a chat about it, please feel free to get in touch