The modern world is fast-paced, with trends changing from month to month and people needing to move just as fast to keep up. To maintain this pace, efficiency has become a top priority for many, even in customer service, but this has led to a degradation of the overall customer experience. Let’s look at some ways that efficiency has caused this harm and how to blend efficiency and experience smoothly.
Where It Goes Wrong
Optimizing for efficiency can go awry when the customer experience is sacrificed. One example of this can be found by examining standard procedures. Typically, when implementing an efficient process, your company will establish standard procedures for handling customer requests. However, this does not mean that every interaction you have with customers will be cut-and-dried and look the same as other cases. If you try to always follow the exact same procedures, your customers will feel the tension and the loss of personalization.
Additionally, while customers reach out first and foremost to have their requests addressed, they still expect to be treated with some semblance of friendliness. This might not mean starting a conversation about how their life is going, but it does mean acknowledging their frustration with their situation and making sure they know you are trying your best to help resolve it. If their interaction feels robotic or impersonal, they will likely make that known to others, and you could lose potential customers as a result.
The Impact on Experience
Customer experience is one of the most important drivers of customer retention and attracting new attention, ideally, positive. When someone calls your customer support line and leaves feeling cared for and appreciated, they are much more likely to share that experience with friends and family or recommend your service to others. On the other hand, if someone has had a rough day and attempts to reach you, and is met with coarse responses and dismissal, they are all the more likely to complain to their loved ones and ensure that others avoid your services.
It’s important to distinguish between different requests and how personal customers want interactions to be. Do they want you to verify some information and then leave, or are they looking for help to change from one service to another after a long day? There are technologies that can help with this. Sentiment analysis helps show you what customers are feeling early in interactions, guiding you on how to respond to keep their frustration down, while a tool such as intelligent routing helps direct them to the right place instead of being passed around and left to wait long times.
Balanced Approach
Just because it can be harmful to prioritize efficiency above anything else, that does not mean that you should give up on it. The best option is to find a balance between that personal connection and efficient processes. As mentioned briefly above, bringing in strategic use of technology can help tremendously in implementing efficient systems. Some more examples include using omnichannel support, which allows you to see the customer’s history and previous interactions all in one place, removes the need for them to repeat themselves, and provides more opportunities to connect with them.
It’s also important to monitor key metrics over time and make adjustments as necessary. A couple of these key metrics are customer satisfaction (CSAT), how satisfied customers are with their resolution, and average handling time (AHT), the average time it takes to handle a customer inquiry from contact to resolution. With these two metrics, you can determine whether your approach leans too far into personal connection when both CSAT and AHT are high, or too far into efficiency when both are low.
A Team That Does This Well
Over almost 20 years, The Office Gurus have found this balance. We work with clients across a variety of industries, from Financial Services and Healthcare to Energy and Home Services, and have experience building human-centered customer journeys alongside cutting-edge technology.
If you are interested in bringing this approach to your business but are unsure where to start, reach out to a Guru today to learn the next steps.
