The Three Es: Why So Many Customers STILL Aren’t Using Digital Channels... and how to change it

We want to persuade our customers to avoid the expensive phone channel when they could self serve digitally, right? They’re already digitally literate, and we've been trying for years to teach them, yet so many calls..... what gives? Could it be that it’s not THEM that’s the issue? Could it be that there are some simple reasons why they don’t engage – the Three Es - and we need a different approach if we are going to be successful in changing customer behaviour at high volume?

I was watching Dead Poet’s Society last night - one of those great films that remind us that there’s more to teaching and learning than just absorbing facts. Robin Williams is the maverick teacher who inspires his students to embrace life with his enthusiasm for great literature. You’d need a heart of stone not be moved when he reads aloud Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick, reminding them that our time on this earth is short - they should make the most of their youth while they can.

We all know that at times we’ve responded really well to some teachers and not to others. There’s no doubt that poor teachers can turn us off from engaging with something. Truly great teachers – like Robin Williams' character - connect with us emotionally first. They make us want to learn. And it got me thinking about our own attempts to educate customers about their digital options. For years we’ve been nagging them during every call: “Did you know you can also do this online / using our app…” All the while the poor customer just wants to get away and get on with their day. We call it education, but with millions of calls still coming in for highly self-servable processes, the ‘learning’ is clearly not sinking in fast enough.

It’s also a real puzzle. ‘Digital’ isn’t a new thing now.

My parents are approaching their eighties and perfectly happy to go digital when it suits them: buying from Amazon or eBay, ordering their shopping delivery online, or finding somewhere to stay on AirB’n’B. A recent article in The Scotsman showed that 1 in 10 homes don’t own books - yet the average home has over 8 connected devices – that number rises to nearly 11 in homes with kids! There really isn’t any age group that isn’t engaging with digital solutions regularly.

Rightly, businesses have invested millions in digital self service platforms that offer 24/7 always-on service in order to capitalise on this phenomenal device proliferation. Who wouldn’t want to solve their issue quickly and simply without a queue?

But ‘Build It And They Will Come’ – to quote from another film, Field Of Dreams – obviously isn’t working well enough.

So what’s stopping this nation of self-service-hungry, time poor, touch screen wielding, digi-consumers from actually getting the message and changing their behaviour en masse to go digital?

Let’s talk about the Three Es… Education, Effort and Emotion

E Number One:- Education

If your customers don’t know about it, they’re not going to ask for it. Got a self service function? Doesn’t matter if we don’t know it’s there. So we all agree we’ve got to educate customers – but how?

E Number Two:- Effort

This one’s simple too. If we want people to engage with self service, it needs to be - not just easy - but EASIER. Typing in my four digit PIN to pay for something was never a big deal just a few months ago, but now one of my other cards is contactless, it seems a real pain. I’m considering changing cards – because of just a few seconds effort! Need more convincing? Follow this link, or just think about Amazon’s One-Click (and now Amazon Go), Netflix vs Blockbuster, AirBnB vs lettings agents…. Whatever seemed easy yesterday might not be easy enough today.

If we’re not laser-sharp on Reducing Customer Effort, self service is doomed.

E Number Three: Emotion

How do we feel when we go to a perfectly good website or app and can’t quickly find what we want to do? The site might be really well designed – but that's not enough. Let’s be realistic here – who hasn’t spent time peering in to a fridge unable to find the ketchup that’s right in front our eyes? Who hasn’t tried to pull a ‘push’ door? So we’re looking for self service and we can’t see it quickly. How do we feel? Frustrated.

That frustration is the Emotion that drives so many people to make poor channel choices… Why? What’s the first thing that most people do when frustration creeps in? We pick up the phone.

And how do we feel when – already frustrated - we’re next confronted by an IVR asking us to ‘Press One for Sales, Press Two for Opening Times….”? Is it any wonder people press random buttons or nothing at all to get connected to a human? We’ve already tried to self serve – now we want help! Even if you’ve invested in speech recognition and we’re asked “How can I help you today?” it’s easy to see why up to 40% of customers just say “Put me through to an agent!”

The emotion of Frustration kills far too much self service.

Breaking Through The Three E’s – The Power of Prediction

The most powerful of the Three Es is Emotion. If we can somehow change the emotional state of our customers then we’re in with a fighting chance. A big ask? Maybe not.

Let’s take an example: a customer is at a restaurant on a date and tries to pay the bill, but the card is refused due to some suspect transactions.

What's the Emotional state?

This is a highly stressful moment and most people go straight to the telephone to call the credit card provider. Looking to resolve the issue fast, there’s little patience for touch-tone IVR menus – the Emotion of frustration is quick to build. The customer doesn’t know there’s a great self service option available because they’ve never been successfully Educated about it – so there’s no way they’re going to proactively ask a speech IVR for self service – most people would just quickly say ‘put me through to a human!’ But what if our IVR does its homework first and looks at recent web behaviour, customer habits and – critically in this case – looks at key customer data including whether or not a fraud flag is raised?

Now the conversation can change: “Hi, am I talking to Jon? Are calling to unblock your credit card?”

“Yes!” That’s the answer that we see in the vast majority of cases. And that’s a powerful word. In this instance it’s more than just agreement, it’s opened a new Emotional state in the customer. Maybe this IVR isn’t a barrier to me – maybe it’s actually on my side …

Time for Education:

Now let’s leverage that open emotional state in real time to provide personalised Education:

“I can send you a text with a link to mobile web page. You can use it to review some charges we’re concerned about. If you’re happy they’re genuine, I can instantly unblock your card. Would you like to try that?

“Yes!”

And super-low Effort

Now we’ve got the customer from a potential phone call to our digital self service solution, we just need to make sure the transaction is super easy. Display the charges to their smartphone. Let them touch a transaction to explore a map view of where it happened (“Oh yes I remember that one now”). And – as we have the phone line open to the IVR - support them with vocal prompts and guidance so we don’t get that issue where they can’t see what to do next (remember that ketchup bottle?), for example, “Click the box to the right of each transaction to confirm it’s genuine – or just click or say Confirm All”

That example starts in the voice channel, but don't forget about those poor folks who start their journeys online - with their heads in the 'digital refrigerator' looking for that metaphorical self-service ketchup bottle. Let's not ask our customers to navigate our websites and apps - let's predictively engage them based on their digital body language and provide Virtual Agents/Chatbots to allow them to ask for what they want using their own language. The Virtual Agent can then do the navigation for them and take them effortlessly to the correct information or function.

Prediction Works

It may not be as rousing as an Oscar winning performance of classic poetry read by one of Hollywood’s greats, but we’ve seen that Prediction of Intent really does work. It changes the Emotional state of customers. That new emotional state provides a window of opportunity to Educate them in real time about how to complete their important task. And once they try it, we know that as long as the experience is Low Effort they’ll keep coming back for more.

So as Robin Williams cried: Carpe Diem! (Seize The Day!) It’s time to break through the Three Es, actually connect with our customers, and make some serious changes to the channel mix of our businesses.

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Interested in automating customer contact and reducing customer effort? You might also like to read: Customer Effort - A New Death Star?

Want to transform your customer experience, self service and channel mix? Contact me on: 

+44 (0) 7534 058 945 / [email protected] / @tweetjonwebb