I hate customer service calls.
Inbound or outbound: it doesn’t matter. I take deep breaths, pour a fresh cup of coffee, preparing to invest the time on the phone. Actually, the worst is sending technicians for in-person service. That means sitting and waiting for the service “window”.
For whatever reason, the past month has seen an unusual level of call centre activity around here. And the call centre and customer service experience was rarely a proud moment.
Our pre-winter furnace tune-up led to 3 service calls before we all agreed that it was time to retire the old unit. That led to an energy audit, which in turn led to a discovery that our attic was missing about a foot and a half of insulation. That led to another few calls for sales and installation service. Then, scheduling the follow-up energy audit. The furnace installers missed their initial 2 hour window and called me an hour later to say they were on the way. I told them not to bother showing up and got a new crew to do the work the next day. Business is good for insulation companies – that must be why I pretty much had to beg their dispatchers to get around to even scheduling the work, let alone performing the job.
A newspaper subscription came due last week. The paper’s outbound call centre didn’t get my renewal order input properly in September, so that led to 3 additional calls this week to get the paper started again. The subscription has finally been renewed, but I was made to feel like they were doing me a favour. Why?
One of my telecom services has had intermittent problems, so that has led to 3 lengthy calls to repair and 3 technician visits so far. They still haven’t found the problem, but at least we now have confirmed diagnostics that there is an actual trouble within the network, not my inside equipment. Apparently, the issue has been escalated to the Office of the President: I can’t wait to see him stop by on his way home wearing a toolbelt and with test gear in hand. [As an aside, I think this would make an excellent United Way fundraiser.]
I had other call centre interactions with my wife’s car company and a telephone company that was apparently testing the Do Not Call List and Competition Bureau rules.
TOA Technologies (a developer of mobile workforce management solutions) is releasing its 3rd annual “Cost of Waiting” study this morning. The study finds that in the US, $37B is lost in labour force productivity as a result of waiting for in-home services or deliveries. Most importantly, 70% of respondents said they would recommend a company solely on the basis of an appointment being on time. The skill of the service technician and initiative to go above and beyond, were among the most important aspects that positively impact consumers’ opinion of a company. There are a lot of firms that should be reading this study and working on improving their performance.
As TOA Technologies has said in its press release, businesses have a narrow opportunity window to transform negative customer perception into customer satisfaction and retention. My furnace company turned around the initial negative experience by applying appropriate oversight and service excellence on the recovery. Obviously, it is better to consistently deliver superior customer service, but even I have bad days once in a while. It’s true.
My biggest gripe? Sitting on hold hearing a message that says that my call is important to them. If my call is so important, why am I on hold waiting for an agent?