I have a close friend who ran an in-bound telesales company -- the eager folks who answer your 2 a.m. call and take your credit card number for the infomercial widget. He was able to enlighten me about the reasoning behind one of my pet peeves: Why do I punch in all kinds of account information before I get connected to an operator, only to be asked to repeat all that information by voice? I'm sure you've used the same gritted-teeth response, "But I already gave you that."
According to my friend, the problem is patent protection. He says somebody patented the process of transferring the information from the automated system to a live agent, so to avoid paying royalties on millions of calls every year, companies have you "reconfirm" all the data you entered.
I honestly haven't taken the time to research the patents and processes, so the joke might be on me, but assuming my buddy's reason is accurate, it restores a little of my faith in corporate America -- but only marginally. If it's true, why can't someone tell us so? (And if not, I really do still want to know why.)
I tell you this story because it's the perfect example of business failing to meet expectations. It's even more frustrating to me as an entrepreneur because we are conditioned to believe our goal should be to exceed expectations at all times. If we can be the Nordstrom of our industry, customer loyalty and business success will surely follow. It seems like common sense advice.
Except it turns out we could be wrong.
I would have agreed with the 89% of surveyed corporate executives who responded that exceeding expectations promotes customer loyalty; in fact, research by Corporate Executive Board's Customer Contact Council shows that quality of service doesn't affect loyalty much at all.
What service levels can do is prevent customer defection, but with that in mind, only a median level of service -- "meets expectations" -- is required to keep a customer from leaving. As long as you aren't actively disappointing customers, service isn't a key component for making customers happier. Bad service is 400% more likely to alienate customers than excellent service is to attract and keep them.
In short, exceeding expectations is a great slogan but the extra expense to generate those results proves to be wasted.
Sometimes I wonder why a company is trying so hard to wow me -- what are they trying to mask using their service personnel? Take the off-the-cuff platitude, "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" offered at the end of a transaction. If I hear that phrase during a frustrating repeat-your-account-information call, for example, it's a good thing we both know the service rep doesn't really mean "anything else" or they'd get an earful of complaints. I don't need to be patronized after a 30-minute phone ordeal. Take all that energy spent trying to exceed my expectations and apply it to your other processes. Then maybe I'll be happier about the whole experience.
The Net Promoter Score is a popular method for rating customer satisfaction and one I've recommended in these posts and elsewhere. Since NPS is supposed to gauge a person's likelihood to refer a friend to you, it seems to encapsulate the entire business relationship from acquisition to fulfillment and support. The Customer Contact Council points out that NPS doesn't explain why you'd be recommended, nor does it measure actual behavior, only intention.
Instead, there could be merit in using Customer Effort Score (CES) to gauge satisfaction. CES is measured by asking a single question: "How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?" The score ranges from 1 (least effort, and best) to 5 (most effort, and worst). As a typical American executive strapped for time, I'd happily answer this question after each and every customer service call. I would far prefer it over "Is there anything else?" since it gives me a chance to vent my feelings with a precise number. At least with numeric scores you can believe they will be tabulated, analyzed, and maybe even improved.
Existing customers are your most valuable asset, and it is well worth the time to learn what they think of you. If the answers aren't as positive as you'd like, it's not the end of the world. Just don't make the mistake of vowing to exceed expectations in customer service while failing to fix fundamentals like transferring me to three different departments and requiring that I repeat my account information ... every ... single ... time.
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