Posts Tagged ‘chat customer service’

Your chat scripts are driving your customers away!

October 28, 2010

I contacted my cable company this week to try to get a problem fixed that had allegedly been fixed three times before. My digital picture was breaking up on occasion, especially during prime time or important sporting events. The last technician who came to my house to fix it said that if his solution didn’t work, the problem was likely a switcher my next-door neighbor was using.

After a summer of light TV watching, the problem started happening again, which told me my next-door neighbor had started watching TV again and using the switcher. This time, however, in an attempt to save time, I decided to talk to someone from the cable company’s online chat. “Jerome” came on line to help me. Let’s see if you can spot the scripted dialogue.

 

Jerome: Hello Steve. Thank you for contacting (company) live chat support. My name is Jerome. Please give me one moment to review your information.

(pause)

Jerome: I do apologize hearing this from you and I know where you are coming from. Let me address this concern for you in the best way I can.

(pause)

Jerome: I understand you have a concern on your cable service by having a break picture and the technician visit about this concern as well. I definitely know where you’re coming from (Haven’t we heard this line before?) and I truly apologize for the inconvenience. I ams determined to resolve your issue today and I know we can do this together. I would like to verify how long have you been dealing with this concern, please? If you won’t mind me asking.

 

Actually, I do mind him asking because he did tell me he was taking a moment to review my information. If he reviewed my information, he’d know the answer.

Steve: It’s got to be over a year. Have you checked my problem history? Everything should be in there.

Jerome: I am very sorry to hear that this issue happened to you. I can understand the frustration when something is not working the way it is supposed to. I am glad you came to chat. I will do my best to assist you in resolving this issue. Let me check it through the account.

 

At this point, I’ve already heard three actual apologies, two “I know where you’re coming from” statements and one “I can understand the frustration when something is not working” statement as well as a couple of statements saying he’ll do his best to help me. It’s been 3-4 minutes already and he still hasn’t helped me because 90% of what he has said came from pre-written scripts. Which doesn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies.

Then, some more scripts:

Jerome: I am very happy to check this for you. Please allow me two minutes to put you on hold and check this account and get back to you after. Is it okay with you?

Steve: It’s fine (considering he told me earlier that he reviewed my account, which apparently he hadn’t)

Jerome: Okay. Please allow me two minutes to check this account. By the way, while waiting for your account to pull up, I will share a feature that you can truly benefit from. Do you know that we have Pay Direct?

 

Because of his scripts, he has now violated the first rule of up-selling and cross-selling – never try to sell the customer something when he’s upset and/or you haven’t solved the problem yet.

After I said “No, I’m really not interested”, he popped in another scripted statement that started with “Great! I know this will help you a lot” before proceeding to explain the program.

The chat went on like that for another 15 minutes while he used script after script and didn’t solve my problem.  Not once did I feel the empathy he had so badly tried to convince me he had at the beginning of the conversation. Finally, I said goodbye, called the customer service line and spoke to a real person who could hear the emotion in my voice and seemed to jettison the scripts.

Here’s the thing:  Customers aren’t stupid. They know a script as soon as they hear it or see it. They know a script is impersonal, doesn’t address the issue, doesn’t show empathy, and is created not for their benefit but for the benefit of the company. Remember form letters? Those were the scripts we used to send by mail. Customers knew it was a form letter then too.

Supervisors and companies need to trust their people to say the right things, ask the right questions, give the right answers, and solve the problems without scripts. To do this, these people need to be trained, trained, trained. After training them, test them on their knowledge and ability to solve problems. Then let them do their jobs.

If you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. If you hire them, educate them. Your customers will appreciate it.

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Prefer Chat? Phone? EMail? Customers want problems fixed, no matter what the technology is

January 11, 2010

I decided to do some non-scientific research this week on Facebook about the way people feel about customer service chats as opposed to speaking with a live agent or sending an email. I expected that a large majority of responses would have preferred a live person on the phone, but that was not the case. However, I did come to a conclusion based on the responses.

The conversation started plainly. Janet noted, “I would rather make a phone call. But then again, I’m a technophobe.” Yes, quite a few people out there are still afraid to talk through the computer. Fear noted. (The names have been changed to protect the annoyed)

Then Louise revealed something about why people might want to talk to a phone rep — “I usually prefer to make a call, but only so they can hear how angry and pissed off they are making me.” Hmm. There is always a group of customers who not only want something done, but also want to let you know how angry they are. The telephone is clearly the best way to express that. It’s easier to ignore something that’s written.

Email got a clear “thumbs down.” Andrew said, “I ignore emails all day long. I can only imagine most companies do too” and Sue came down on the side of live chat, dissing email in the process – “I agree they’ll get my money faster if they have Live Chat. If I have to wait for an email response or a person to call, my purchase greatly diminishes.” Even those who seemed to like the idea of email had no confidence in the medium. Robert said, “I would prefer to send an email for non-urgent problems … time management. However (and it’s a big, HOWEVER) (I’ve) never found a company that responds quickly and effectively to email.” This caused Veronica to add, “Robert, I’m with you. All I want is help with a minimum of interaction. Email does that for me. Of course, when I get put into an email queue with a message that I’ll hear back within five working days, I want to call to let them know how their customer service sucks eggs.”

Are you feeling the anger out there?

Only Linda gave an unqualified endorsement to chat. She said, “Totally agree with that one, Steve! LOVE the companies with online chats/agents.”

But it was Monica who really blew me away with her well-expressed analysis of the pros and cons (mostly cons) of all three:

“I like to chat with a live agent on the telephone. I never seem to have any luck getting the info I need while “chatting” and can tell from their tone of typing that they either don’t understand what I need, don’t know the correct solution or don’t really care.

“I have been trying to email the United States Postal Service regarding a recent order.  When I speak with the technical support on the phone, they forward me to the home page site, which doesn’t tell me how to cancel an order. And then when I explain everything in the email, send the email to the link they have on the page,  and then have the email come back to me as undeliverable…. I now have a six-month subscription for a book of stamps (although I’m getting six books every month). Thank goodness they are the ‘Forever’ stamps, because I’m going to have them forever…

“I can’t get through to them via email, can’t get the customer support I need via telephone technical support. Can’t cancel the order on my account history page, and I can’t for the life
of me remember my USPS user name and password. There is no more customer service at all.”

My conclusion?  Customers (except possibly the technophobes) are willing to try any form of interaction to have their problem resolved. But it’s not technology that creates a great customer experience. It’s the people – well-trained or not well-trained, customer-friendly or not customer-friendly, who make the difference. Millions of dollars of technology will do nothing unless the human being handling the interaction, designing the website, or writing the email or chat knows what he or she is doing.

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Study says customers feel “duty bound” to tell others about their bad experiences

October 21, 2009

A new survey by RightNow Technologies has some very disturbing news for those who think they can give poor service and get away with it.  The survey studied online shoppers’ attitudes toward the technology used for customer care, but it has application for anybody dealing with customers.

There were several striking statistics from the survey, especially when it comes to spreading word about a particular company through social networking.  Half of online shoppers said they felt “duty-bound” to warn others about a particular retailer, 16% tell about their negative experiences specifically to stop other people from dealing with that company, and 30% want to vent their disappointment about the experience.  Many, if not most of these people will use Twitter, YouTube, and other social media to spread the word, as United Airlines learned from the video “United Breaks Guitars.”

Survey respondents had some good and bad news for companies using multi-channels to provide customer care – chat, email, phone and web. While, respondents said they were generally happy with the interaction channels, more than half felt that the channels showed a lack of consistency when providing information. In other words, one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Also, 78% of online shoppers said that organizations should take steps to listen to what customers are saying about their products on social networking sites and to follow up with those people.  And 60% said it was acceptable for retailers to monitor their comments and suggest relevant products, services or uses, even when dealing with a customer problem.

But the most interesting thing I found was that 64% of consumers who used the “chat” function said they would rather “chat” with an agent than speak with the agent on the phone and 69% said they would prefer chat to email. This has major consequences for those who have set up their customer care departments around telephone or email service and have neglected to put in a chat option.

So, what to do?

  • Go to your own customers and ask them what their preferences are when it comes to customer care.
  • If you are serving customers in any way through your website, make sure you have a chat option or begin to plan for one.
  • Start training your people on using chat and email functions as well as telephone and in person customer service.
  • Have at least one person from your customer care area actively monitor social networking sites for mentions of your company or store. Give them the authority to make decisions to make complaining customers happy.
  • Create an area on your own website where customers can leave comments on service, good and bad. Monitor those comments and respond to customers as quickly as possible.

When my grandfather ran his men’s store, the worst thing he had to worry about was whether his customers would complain about him or his store while drinking at the many bars in the neighborhood.  Being able to leave comments to a faceless website or a faceless chat has the same release of inhibitions as the drinks the bar patrons were using to loosen their lips back then.

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