CUSTOMER RETENTION – A BIGGER CHALLENGE THAN CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

How many companies are you personally battling right now because they shipped the wrong item, your item was lost, damaged, or different from the description?  How many companies are you fighting because the service you subscribed to isn’t working properly, the billing is incorrect, a contractor wasn’t responsive, didn’t show up or didn’t have the parts to fix or install something?

Based on my recent conversations with others, these issues, while rampant, are not even the real problem.  The bigger issue occurs when you reach out to customer service and you must decode their voicemail system to speak with a human, their voice bot doesn’t allow you to speak with a human, or their chatbot can’t answer your question or solve your problem.  This is not a minor issue.  This is THE problem.

More than ever before, when we deliver training to sales teams, salespeople ask how to deal with angry customers who are pissed off – not because something happened, but because whatever happened was made worse by incompetent or non-existent customer service or technical support.

Who thought it was a good idea to have AI and/or offshore support teams solve customer problems when those customers were already upset before they reached out?  Both consistently get abysmal ratings and neither is capable of accomplishing anything beyond further upsetting the customer.

This is a double-edged problem because while it manifests as a customer service problem it affects customer retention and it becomes a sales problem.  Companies may tell you they need to do a better job with customer service training, but it’s not a training problem.  It’s a caring problem.  To put customer problems in the hands of a bot, no matter how artificially intelligent it may be, is a disaster waiting to happen.  To put already frustrated customers in the hands of offshore reps, who don’t know anything other than how to follow a script that isn’t in their native language, is even more frustrating because when you speak with a human you have higher expectations that the problem will be resolved.

Customer service teams, even when invisible or automated, are the ones responsible for interfacing with unhappy customers.  Disney would call this a combustion point – a potential event (they use being unable to locate your car as an example), that would tarnish a customer’s experience at the happiest place on earth.

It is irresponsible for companies to take their least trained, least effective, and least talented people, and assign them to the company’s biggest combustion points.  This horrible practice forces sales teams to spend way too much of their time replacing customers, units, revenue, and profit when it could have all been prevented.

Come on C Suite! At a time when we need people to apply common sense and be practical, your customer service and sales decisions are just as bad as those made by our pathetic politicians.