Customer Experience, More Double Talk?
March 4, 2010
Call an airline. Call a bank. Call a hospital. Ask a question. Sure, when you have listened to messages that explain that the call will be recorded, the menu options have changed, and that all customer service representatives are busy.
Need technical support. Call a big company. Call a consulting firm. Call an authorized reseller. Sure, when you have listened to a recording. Provided the extension that came with the for fee hotline support you bought. Listen to a person whom you may not know and who may not know you. Explain the problem. Push aside the “pull the plug” advice. Try to get someone who can answer your question.
That’s the customer experience that seems to define “quality” today.
Source: http://www.reefbuilders.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/customer-service-fail.jpg
The word “experience” has become a metaphor for whatever it takes to get money out of a person and not have that person [a] cancel the contract, [b] talk to a manager, or [c] send tweets about the “experience.” In short, experience means doing something other than what the caller wants; namely, fix the darned problem.
I read “The Sometimes Deadly Customer Experience Strategy”. I was hoping to learn that something new was on the horizon. Nope. Here’s the key passage that I underlined. Note that the “experience” is the Toyota sudden acceleration problem:
What I saw was stonewalling rather than ever really trying to locate the problem, wrapped in polite letters and diligent dealers trying to figure it out. Customer experience.
Well, close enough for horseshoes but not close enough for me.
I am deeply suspicious of any attempt by a company to “manage” using pop psychology, apologies, or other emoluments.
Furthermore, like the Google anti trust “experience”, perhaps there is more behind these problems. Sure, executives make mistakes, but I think the larger context is that there are few, if any, downsides for short cuts. In the technical world, when people are done explaining surges and search engine failures, no one has a clue where the problem originated, whose responsibility it was to prevent the problem, and who will end up paying for the problem.
Doing business in technology is influenced by some larger cultural forces of which the lack of consequences is one small factor.
I don’t know about you but I am genuinely surprised when a company delivers a product that works, cares about me as a customer, and makes an effort to improve its products. What should be the standard operating method has become the equivalent of finding a four leaf clover.
Forget experience. Make products that work. Make it easy for customers to get answers.
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2010
No one paid me to write this article. I will report non payment to the GSA’s national call center which always delivers great customer service no matter what any one asks.
Comments
3 Responses to “Customer Experience, More Double Talk?”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
[…] Customer Experience, More Double Talk? : Beyond Search […]
[…] Customer Experience, More Double Talk? : Beyond Search […]
[…] Customer Experience, More Double Talk? : Beyond Search […]