I focused much on customer service two weeks ago and I really can't escape it.
I was on a call yesterday making a large order for lunch coming up.
The woman on the other end was insanely pleasant as she tried to walk me through a new menu and my inability to be more quickly decisive.
She did have to put me on hold an inordinate amount of times and each time was PROFUSELY apologetic. I was prepared and thankfully not in a hurry. I can quickly imagine someone else taking conversation and turning it into a complaint (unjustified, but I can see it).
Amber Naslund has a related piece back last month that I liked discussing our aptitude to taking complaints online.
I agree with Amber that #FAIL is overused, but also we need to be aware that failure or BAD customer service is in the eye of the beholder.
For companies, SMALL mistakes can be huge to a customer. Like I said with my example, I could easily see someone taking it out of hand and quickly getting annoyed. I knew I was going to take a while and adjusted and had an awesome customers service experience.
Techcruch reports:
The Customer Experience Impact 2010 report reveals that 82% of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer service experience. Of these, 73% cited rude staff as the primary pain point, and 55% said a company’s failure to resolve their problems in a timely manner drove them away.
Almost everybody surveyed, a full 95%, said after a bad customer experience they would “take action.” 79% of U.S. consumers said they blabbed about their negative customer experiences in public and amongst friends. Of consumers who took to social media sites including Facebook and Twitter to publicly air a complaint, 58% expected a response from the company, 42% expected a response from a company within a day, but only 22% said they’d actually gotten a response as a result of griping there.
Amber asked what was missing? I think too often we jump to #FAIL, but sometimes it is rightly so. Rather we need to be willing to PUMP up when something good happens. Talk about why something is great- too often the feedback is only being used when it is negative. Don't forget to use it for the positive as well.