This morning on Radio 4 I caught the end of a discussion about whether we have become a nation of grumpy old men and women, quick to complain and blame others, less willing to accept that sometimes our woes are simply down to fate and bad luck. One commentator suggested what people are fed up with is not so much the inability to accept when things go wrong, but rather the problem of no-one being prepared to listen when there's a genuine complaint. Call centres, automated phone and email systems, the apparent intractability of customer service in the face of what 'the computer says'... it all adds up to techno-rage on a grand scale.
Surely we command the technology, not the other way around. Humans are infinitely more complex and capable of intelligent action than are computers, yet in the race to automate customer service (ie reduce costs) we de-humanise both the service agents and recipients in the process. We also lose business.
I can think of two recent episodes which made me realise how effortless it is for a business to lose customers this way.
Our household was a loyal customer of Pipex broadband for 6 years until one day when I tried to connect to the internet all I got was a message to call their 0870 number to find out why my connection was down. Apparently I hadn't given them my new credit card details, so when they were unable to take a payment they had closed the account. If I wanted it re-instated I would have to apply as a new customer, pay a connection fee and wait up to 10 days to be back on line. Fine - I switched providers.
Then three months later Pipex sent an expensive piece of direct mail offering to 'buy me back'. It doesn't take a degree in psychology to know it wasn't going to work. Never mind that they made zero effort to keep me as a customer when they had the chance, but then they sent me a desperately-trying-to-be-cute mailing which actually managed to offend.
Even small firms appear to have problems. I had a call recently from a local telesales company asking if I had heard of them, as a precursor to a sales pitch. Less than six months previously I had hired this firm to train up an employee in telesales skills, so yes, I had heard of them. This was a small business, not a multinational - yet they literally did not know who their customers were, and this is B2B we're talking about.
So what's the answer? Could marketing and customer services work together more? Will utilities firms start making their support and customer service phone lines 0800 numbers rather than 0870? (Funny how their sales lines are always 0800) Will we be able to get a response to a complaint without having to threaten legal action first? Will customer service representatives be given the authority to listen and make real, human decisions? As Lisa Hoffmann points out, angry customers just want to be heard.
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