Think about the news these days. Often, when you hear about a company, if it’s not about a merger or earnings results, it’s about customer service issues. And especially in this era of social media, phones are on, raised, and documenting customer service issues as they happen.
Now, not all of us work for those companies mentioned in the news, but every company has customers and if you’re not doing any sort of monitoring of your customers’ satisfaction levels, you should consider starting…now.
According to Forrester, 72% of businesses say that improving the customer experience is their top priority. However, it’s also important to note that , according to a study last year from NewVoiceMedia, U.S. companies lose an estimated $62 billion a year due to poor customer service. Yikes.
No matter what product or service your company sells, we can all acknowledge the world of customer service and satisfaction has changed.
For many products and services, we are living in a self-service-by-choice era. In a recent article from Harvard Business Review, it was noted that across industries, “fully 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative.”
Offering self-service can produce some great cost savings for a company, but it has also changed how customers and frontline service reps interact.
As customers handle more of the simple issues themselves, frontline service reps get increasingly tough ones—the issues customers can’t solve on their own. And today’s reps are struggling with these complex problems. As one service leader at a large retailer admitted to us, “Our people are woefully ill-equipped to handle today’s customers and their issues. We’re not running a contact center here. It’s more like a factory of sadness.”
–Kick-Ass Customer Service, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2017
To recap, self-service is on the rise, frontline service talent may not be getting the investment that self-service technology is receiving, and customer service issues get wide play on social media.
So, what is your company measuring when it comes to customer satisfaction, if anything? Do you have a good handle on what customer satisfaction issues your company may be facing?
If you don’t have a solid plan or system in place for measuring customer satisfaction, we invite you to take our Improving Customer Satisfaction: Monitoring Methods that Deliver Insights class on May 23rd. In this one-session class you’ll learn valuable tools to help plan and launch your organization’s first customer satisfaction research program. The class includes discussions on satisfaction versus loyalty, practical research options, and how to avoid common challenges with these kinds of studies.
Often as part of your satisfaction research project you will conduct customer interviews. To prep for that, we also suggest our Conducting Research Interviews: 12 Tips for a Stress-free Process class on July 13th.
Remember, every company has customers and if you’re not doing any sort of monitoring of your customers’ satisfaction levels, you should consider starting…now.
