You know who they are--your direct sales force, your call center representatives, your online support chat agents--the people who "talk" directly to customers when there is a problem. Most of the time, these people are well-trained, well-spoken, and well-intentioned. They are usually truly sympathetic--even empathetic. But they often work either with their hands tied up in red tape or with too little information to truly address the customers’ problems.
My most recent experience occurred this week, when my Internet access, telephone access, and cable TV (oh, the horror) went down. I get all these services from the same provider, and short outages are not unheard-of. But this time, the outage was of sufficient duration that the battery backup on my telephone modem was spent, and I was hopelessly alone without a lifeline.
I went to my car to call Comcast, my provider--you see, my cell phone doesn’t work very well from within my home (tower positions and all). After going through the labyrinth of automated voice responses, I was informed that there was an outage in my area and that it was being worked on by technicians. Because of looming deadlines, including having to look up how to get to a meeting several hours later, I decided I needed a bit more information than that.
I pressed "0" enough times that I was finally put through to a CSR. This young man was very pleasant and truly wanted to help me. But all he knew initially was that there "was an outage in my area and that was being worked on by technicians." I already knew that! What I wanted to know was estimated time of repair. Did it pay for me to go to the public library to get free wi-fi for the rest of the day? Should I sit tight and know that my communication with the outside world would be back momentarily? Should I crawl into a fetal position and yearn for a less techno-addicted era?
My nice CSM put me on hold and went looking for more info. He was able to tell me that "a node was out," and that most of the time, this was fixed in two to four hours. That was good to know, but I still had questions. "Has anyone from the field service team reported in?" and "Is it a simple problem or something out of the ordinary?" The CSR had no idea.
We had a good talk, as I sat alone in my car with my cell phone. He agreed that it was very frustrating that he couldn't get any information from the people actually addressing the problem. He admitted that he had spent the last hour or more talking to people like me and feeling helpless. It was nice to be supported, but my questions still couldn’t be answered.
What I ended up doing is calling a colleague, asking him to Google Maps or MapQuest the address I was going to--the directions were complex, so I had to take a lot of notes (and I still got lost at least once, but that is neither here nor there). I tried one last time to see if I had any connectivity, now several hours after losing it. No luck. So I went to my meeting. By the time I came home about three hours later, sweet, sweet connectivity had returned! I could make a call; I could access my email; my DVR would be able to record Hell's Kitchen!
The moral? Think about how well you are arming your service staff. Are field technicians given the tools and processes to report on progress to the people who talk to customers? Are all of your support channels working together to truly help customers when there are problems? I know this isn’t the standard of how this typically works, but it should be. If you think from the customer's point of view when you are developing support processes for your different support teams--call center, online help, technical support, field engineering, etc.--you will realize that all of them need to know the complete story in order to provide a great customer experience and enhance the customer relationship.
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