“Your call is very important to us”
I’ve been talking with my students this week about how companies maintain or lose customer satisfaction with consumers, and the topic always brings up good and bad personal experiences.
On the negative side (and there are more of these than positive ones), I wrote in this blog two summers back about how Capital One had declared me dead, causing me all kinds of credit problems at the exact time I was trying to get a home mortgage.
A Costa Rican call center operator translates and responds to an American customer call in Heredia, Costa Rica. Most American companies make heavy use of such international call centers to try and handle customer orders, questions, and complaints. The results are, to say the least, mixed. (AP Photo/Kent Gilbert)
Even after I finally got a human voice (albeit from a foreign call center) to admit he believed I was alive, he told me “the computers are in charge, however,” and they had from 30-45 days to investigate and resolve the problem.
Mixed results
On the up side — and this may sound ironic given the stereotype of this government agency — I have found the IRS to be extremely helpful over the years. It’s easier to get a human and knowledgeable voice on the other end of the line with the Internal Revenue Service than with United Airlines, even when all you’re trying to do is buy their service.
For the purposes of this blog, however, I am most interested in the intersection of communication technology and customer satisfaction. It’s no stretch to say that the inability to talk to a human being, and the dehumanizing experience of talking to a digital signal, is probably the No. 1 cause of customer dissatisfaction in America.
A popular topic
Author Laura Penny has even written a book about this, appropriately called, Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bull—-.” The cover features a large shovel, and the first chapter is called, “You’re Soaking in It.”
More than any other lie that corporate America would spin onto consumers, “Your call is very important to us,” is the one that sends most consumers through the roof. We know a long delay awaits and — even then — we will be handed a digitized voice to talk to.
The dehmanizing side
This whole dehumanizing concept of requiring customers to talk to robots, or at least a voice from a call center on another continent, was dramatized in the George Clooney film, Up in the Air. In that film’s most tragic and poignant scene, we see a veteran, dedicated company employee being fired by a detached voice from a computer screen. He starts to weep; the computer is unable to mimic of even register that emotion.
We know that technology is very important to customer satisfaction. If a business doesn’t avail itself of Web 2.0 communication technology, that can — in itself — become a cause for disgruntled customers. We want multiple access points to a company we deal with, starting with Web access.
NBRI weighs in
As one of its ten tips to customer satisfaction, The National Business Research Institute (NBRI) lists the need to give customers Web access to your business and to make it easy for them to place their orders. It explains:
“Technology means more than a fancy Flash website. In order to satisfy customers, companies have to keep up with the latest technological advances or suffer the consequences. Change is never easy, but business as usual isn’t a viable alternative anymore. Technology can help small and mid-size companies look like big companies by improving the quality of the purchasing experience without adding staff to the payroll.”
Twisting its use
But taking that same technology and turning it into a demeaning obstacle to the goal of customer interaction … therein lies the rub.
Turns out, I’m far from being alone in my assessment. Wall Street Journal columnist Gary Hamel penned an entire column about this, entitled, “Your Call is Important to Us. Yeah, Sure.” He writes:
“What irks me most, though, is when companies barricade their customer support staff behind a near impenetrable wall of multi-level telephone prompts. I mean, golly, you’d think I was trying to get through the White House switchboard rather than obtain a part number for my broken dishwasher.
“I get the fact that companies are trying to keep their call center costs to a minimum—but I wish they’d at least be honest about that. (But) Instead of telling us: We are experiencing unusually heavy call volumes . . .
“They should say: Even more of our underpaid and overworked staff called in sick than usual.
“Instead of telling us: You may be able to find what you need on our Web site . . .
They should say: There are 10 people in the world who still haven’t heard about the Internet and we want to make sure you’re not one of them.”
Anyone listening?
Thanks Gary. You think the decision-makers at Capital One and United Airlines ever read columns and blogs?
One can only hope. A call from one of them, about this issue, is one I would wait for.
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Comments
I think that the bigger companies that use the automated system are also trying to save money from hiring on as many operators as they have to. It’s expensive to train and hire these people that will be dealing with delicate information. While I don’t necessarily love the automated system, I understand why larger companies have it. They need to be able to answer the generic questions that people have without bothering their numbered employees. I’m sure there aren’t enough employees to answer the amount of silly questions that people have. I think being put on hold and waiting forever is a different story. I believe that to be rude and time wasting. While we all crave the personal experience, it’s impossible to get it all the time, and I honestly believe people are too quick to complain and too slow to compliment.
I absolutely despise the long line of prompts that are given whenever you need to call a company. I do understand why they have them, but they are so annoying. I have had a lot of experiences with these types of answering machines as well as with off-shore call centers. It is not pleasant. Sometimes it is the most frustrating thing to talk to someone who literally is not capable of understanding your dilemma. I would be very interested in reading that book.
I can not even count how many times I have been left on hold forever over a very simple question. Companies are so quick to put you on hold that they do not even ask what it is you are calling about to begin with. Then once/if you get through you are usually transferred and put on hold again. I think this is a really frustrating situation for customers. I have found it useful that a lot of companies are putting information online about trouble shooting different things or valuable information that may keep you from calling and being put on hold. This is good for both the customer and the company. We would all like to simply tell business to hire more people to answer phones but with that comes great expenses for the company and an increase in prices for their products.. is this really what we want? Online videos, scheduling, and other things people call in for would be much easier if at times, people who were able, could just log and get it done!
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I have to say that this exact thing really gets under my skin personally. I cannot stand when they say, “Your call is important to us” yet we have to wait another 30 minutes minimum to even get through to yet another automated voice. I feel that the majority of companies (big and small) almost take technology a little too far. Although I know that it is necessary for companies to use technology; I just feel that they should be using it in a more productive manner. in regard to a company not having a website to go onto is just simply stupid. Now a days if you do not have a website and not to mention you are keeping people on hold what feels like forever, its a simple as this; they just are not going to get the business and people will find a company that does make it easy, quick, and simple for them to figure out.
Technology is meant to help organizations better maintain customer relations– if used correctly that is. Too many companies are focusing on cookie cutter solutions for consumers. “if you are having problem A press 1, problem B press 2, otherwise press C”… after 20 minutes of listening to static-y elevator tunes, all I get is an unhelpful man transferring me to another department. Overusing these automated machines is simply an indication of a larger problem buried deep in the company culture. Since all products and services go to people, no company that does not put customers first can succeed in the long run. Ignoring customers only serves to create a massive alienation. This alienation, in fact, is the downfall of many Fortune 500 companies. Cough Best Buy.
This is totally unrelated, but since you posted the picture I feel I should clarify that it is of a professional SPA/ENG interpreter actually helping the non English speaking costumers of companies in the United States. The interpreters do not deal with costumers directly, but rather help close the language gap between companies and their clients. I understand hat a lot of companies outsource the call center and interpreter companies do that too. Why? Interpreters in Costa Rica, while not being native English speakers, have tremendous command of the language, with a lot of times barely noticeable accents and they are for the most part, native Spanish speakers, with a command for regionalisms and understanding of Spanish that is hard to find in the U.S.A
I think it is so true that big companies like to merely throw its clientele into an automated system in order to weed out those with questions that they view as a waste of their time. I think that executives of those companies want to hire fewer people to sit and answer phones all day, which means they have to have some sort of system to lessen the amount of calls coming into them. Therefore, they must have an automated system of which the callers will either be tired of waiting on, will have their questions answered before ever speaking to a real person, or will eventually reach someone if their situation is deemed important enough by the automated system. Although it seemingly saves companies money, it seems to me that it would always behoove a company more to take proper care of its consumers if they want to keep them. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting on hold for a never-ending amount of time to have a quick and simple question answered. It is the company’s responsibility to take care of its customers, I don’t think they need to be lazy about it…hire more people!