For Customer Loyalty Make It Easy for Your Customers to Get Served

The less effort your customers need to expend in order to get service, the more likely they are to be loyal.

I recently read that we spend 36% of our time sleeping.  So if you live to be 90 years old, you will spend over 32 years asleep.  Fortunately, sleep is healthy and restorative for both the mind and the body.  The same cannot be said about waiting on hold to get help.  A recent customer survey uncovered the fact that an average customer will, in their lifetime, spend over 40 days on hold waiting for the customer service they need. Another study showed that the average American can look forward being on hold for up to one full year during their lifetime. We consider this a form of “customer mistreatment,” and it will turn your customers away from you and toward competitors who serve them better.

For a real life example, a 2014 study of the Dane County 911 Center in Wisconsin found that some 911 callers waited longer than five minutes before hanging up. Thousands of calls took longer than 40 seconds to answer even though The National Emergency Number Association recommends 90 percent of all 911 emergency calls be answered in 10 seconds or less.

While the 911 example is extreme and online self-service would not be applicable for them, here is how you can fix your customer service strategy, ease your customer’s pain and show them the light.

1. Examine your current self-service web plan from the customer’s point of view. What are the most likely scenarios? Then set up the self-service questions in a logical, systemized way. When customers have to move from the web to the phone, they are 10% more disloyal than if they could have solved their problem or answered their questions on their own without picking up the phone.  Spend the time to get it right and test it with customers so that you can continuously anticipate customer needs and improve the process.
   
   
2. Test out your self-service plan with actual customers or in focus groups. Make sure you guide customers as efficiently as possible to the channel that will provide the help they need for the most frequent and important customer service scenarios.  It is quite painful when it is obvious that a company has not invested the time to get it right.
   
   For example, we just bought our 16-year-old son a used car.  When you buy a used car, you need to register it with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).  You would think that this would be a fairly common customer need.  Yet no one in the family can figure out if we can register in person, online or even if we can schedule an appointment to register the new car.  So we had to call the DMV.  Then we were on hold for 15 minutes.  Then the person that answered the phone had to transfer us.  On and on…Needless to say, a pretty simple need has now turned into a very frustrating experience.
   
   
3. Follow your customer’s route through the self-service tools and provide FAQs that use customer language. Test and re-test with real customers until you have it right.  Make the path as simple and clear to follow as possible.  You will be amazed at the number of incorrect assumptions you will make about how customers will do things.  Remember you are building the customer service experience to serve and thrill your customers…only they can point you in the right direction.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/customer-service-strategy/