Why Customer Service is More Important Than Ever
When the human element is absent, complainers often say things they wouldn’t say face to face!
Once upon a time, not too long ago, if you complained to a shop, a call centre, a repairman, or an energy company, you might also have complained to your friends and family about how rubbish they were and that was generally about it. Now customer service is more Important
If you got really frustrated you might escalate it to writing to the head of the organisation or even write a letter in the local or national press.
For the most part, that complaint stayed in a little bubble that might or might not get
resolved.
It’s all completely different now. The advent and ubiquity of social media now means that not only might you complain to the organisation and moan to your friends and family but you can also tell the world.
With Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, Instagram, WhatsApp and whatever else is being invented as you read this, you can let anyone who chooses to read your posts know exactly what you think and feel.
The power of the consumer is increasing exponentially, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Customer Service is More Important than Ever
Companies must be aware that their customers deserve excellent customer service and, if they don’t get it, they will let the world know of their disappointment, not to mention rage and frustration.
On the other hand, this kind of public venting is unregulated and therefore anyone can say anything they want whether it’s truthful or not (e.g. someone on a personal vendetta bent on revenge, someone who’s a chronic complainer who collects evidence against real or perceived misdemeanours and of course troll sites). These public forums can have a serious impact on organisations and can be devastating to individuals who are in most cases doing the best they know how.
What seems to be common is that because the ‘human element‘ is absent, complainers often
feel compelled to let rip and say things they would be unlikely to say face to face or even on the phone. The level of anonymity afforded by social media gives customers permission to chuck out all social graces, courtesy and politeness to be replaced in many cases with bile, venom and even death threats.
Good Customer Service
We work with a number of call centres and most recently ran a Good Customer Service course for New Call Telecom as part of a Channel 4 documentary series to be broadcast later this year called Serving the Nation.
Typical of many contact centres, the agents at New Call were a great bunch of people who genuinely care about their customers and who take the constant attacks quite personally. They feel it very deeply when customers complain on Facebook or through other social media even before they’ve picked up the phone to make a formal complaint. Not only that, the agents pointed out to us that people were often very quick at using social media to pounce and criticise and yet completely ignore social media when their problem is resolved well or when they themselves made a mistake.
Broadcasting to the world your gripe seems to be a lot easier than broadcasting your praise.
Nonetheless, social media is now part of the equation and can’t be ignored. And although
there are lots of things companies can do to use social media to promote themselves, for us the best possible way to manage how organisations are viewed through social media is to offer the best possible customer service. This way companies build a reputation for responsiveness, courtesy, a passion to resolve issues and of course, most important of all, that the people at the end of the phone are real human beings not script-reading automatons.
And we’re all looking forward to Serving the Nation and seeing how complaining and customer
service is ‘served up’.
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