The Joy of CX: One Prospect’s Tale
The joy of CX?
We hosted a visitor at Sytel HQ recently who has done a lot of international travelling in the past year, despite lockdowns. They talked about their experiences with a variety of companies around the world, as a new customer seeking to do business.
It was an interesting snapshot on one person’s view of customer service.
Here’s their account of typical experiences, taken verbatim.
Your first way in might be an inbound call. It’s fairly easy to track down a phone number to call. But wait times may be many, many minutes and the service may do its very best to persuade you that your best option is to hang up and go visit their web site. “All the information you will need is laid out there in a very clear way.” Or, you may be allowed to enter your number to get a callback, which may or may not then happen.
So you figure out that an email may be the best bet. But try as you might, there is nothing to be found on the web site. Except of course complaints and feedback forms which make it clear that they would love to hear from you and that their mission is to respond within three working days!
What about sending an SMS? Well, there’s no number to send it to.
What about social media? Most companies comb their social media sites for customer comments and feedback. You may get lucky, but not if you are looking for quick service.
The website may suggest you try a content-rich bot. “Answers to all your questions are there.” Maybe, if you have the patience.
If you are really lucky you may find a live agent available on Chat to actually exchange messages with you. It happens, and since the session is almost certainly being recorded, they won’t want to let you down. Hurrah!
Try it yourself
Food for thought. If you are a contact service provider, what is your first reaction to all this? “Not me!” We hope you are right. But try contacting your own company as an unknown prospect keen to buy. Whether you believe your own marketing messages or not, this is a great audit exercise to do.
To be fair, in all the cases above, the potential customer was passing through and new, so the companies they were contacting had no profile for them and hence no knowledge of their buying intentions. But there are tools and techniques allowing you to do a much better job and delight not just existing customers but potential ones as well.
Feel free to talk to us and explore how the best contact center solutions can help your business.
