I loved reading the article, Press “3″ If Automation is Making You Crazy, on the Harvard Business Review by co-founder of Fast Company, William C. Taylor .
It brings to light yet again how completely ineffectual automated call centers are and how much they frustrate and turn off customers. With all of the choice and competition for customers now, the company that puts real people in place to engage and communicate with customers is going to win the loyalty and referral battle, not to mention high marks for their branding activities.
The Wall Street Journal reported that more and more companies have begun to worry that their automated call centers have left their customers frustrated, dissatisfied, and even angry. We’ve all had the same mind-numbing experience: You dial a toll-free number looking for answers to a question about a home appliance, or a credit-card statement, or a banking problem, and you get one of those computer-generated voice prompts: “Press 1 for product information, press 2 to check on an order, press 3…” You make your choice, get another computer-generated voice prompt, and so it goes for 10 or 20 minutes. The process is inhuman by design and often ineffective when it comes to solving simple problems.
Duh… Are they just realizing this? Well I guess the more they awaken to this reality the sooner they can consider changing it!
An amazing example of a wildly successful company that puts talking to the customer first is Zappos!
“We want to talk to our customers,” CEO Tony Hsieh told me. “We encourage them to call. I speak at branding conferences and there’s always lots of debate: Consumers are being bombarded by thousands of marketing messages, how do you get yours to stand out? Well, as unsexy and low-tech as it sounds, the telephone is really powerful.”
Indeed it is. Getting personal and training your people to be personable is such a smart investment and should be a priority with regard to what the customer wants and appreciates. The benefits are proven: good will, referrals, testimonial tweets and posts, more business and sales.
Automation can be a brand killer. It screams they are just too big, busy, lazy or overwhelmed to talk to customers. They know they need ‘customer service,’ so they farm them off to another country to talk to real automated sounding people or create cyber space tutorials of the FAQ’s and hope they get what they need there! I guess something better than nothing?
I realize that some automation is necessary, but when you are trying to grow the trust stage of a relationship, what really seals the deal is an old fashioned person to person connection, with someone that knows what they are talking about and actually cares.
What do you think about automated customer service either by phone, email or social media? Does it frustrate you?
Author:
Deborah Shane is an author, entrepreneur, radio host and expert. She is the heart and soul of her business education and professional development company, Train with Shane and is in her third year of hosting a weekly business radio show on blogtalkradio.com. She writes for several national business, career and marketing blogs, and websites including smallbiztrends.com, careerealism.com, Internationalbusinesstimes.com, Smartbrief.com and blogher.com Her new book Career Transition-make the shift-the 5 steps to successful career reinvention is available now on amazon.com. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogtalkradio @Deborah Shane, or visit www.deborahshane.com.
