Calling any call center can be a nightmare for the customer. And telephone being the most popular and preferred mode of customer support, the stakes are high. With alternatives available at every corner, organizations should eliminate the trivial methods of customer support and come up with strategies and technologies that could transform their call center to a customer experience management system. Optimising on customer support can improve customer retention, customer acquisition, and sales.
One way to provide excellent customer support and customer experience is to avoid frustrating the customers when they contact the support team.
Here are 10 most common customer frustrations that every call center should avoid.
1) The IVR abyss: IVR system that is annoying and difficult to navigate can make the customer extremely hostile. Placing the customer to a no man’s land after lengthy prompts can irate the customer to the point of hanging up and bringing up the issue to social medias.
2) Long hold time: There is nothing more frustrating than putting callers on hold. Customers wish to have the call center agents’ undivided attention, and when he/she is being put on hold, the agent is killing the most valuable commodity-time. Social media channels are swarming with distressed customers venting their frustration with holding time.
3) Inadequate information with agent: Why do customers normally call call centers? To answer queries, resolve issues, ease a complex process, etc. But what if the call center representative is not equipped with the necessary information to handle such a call.
4) Unlimited Call transfers: Shuffling the customers from one rep to another can end up in a very heated situation. And the only thing worse than being bounced around from one agent to another, is asking the customer to do the bouncing themselves. “We are unable to resolve your query. Kindly call xxx-xxx-xxxx to speak with a representative”
5) Mechanised agents: Call centers have entered an uncanny valley of robotised interactions and mechanised call center services, where there is zero or minimum human interference. The agents follow scripts to handle every kind of customer call, making the call less personable and empathising.
6) Asked to repeat information: Customers might contact call centers for various purposes, and being asked to repeat personal information at every call can get under their nerves. Blame departmental silos for this, but customers couldn’t care less for the organizations paucity of integration and infrastructure.
7) Follow-up calls: Mistakes happen, and customers call when they are unable to resolve the issue themselves.But if the problem persists, then there is something seriously wrong with the product or the company entirely. Having to call the call center again and again for the same reason can be a huge aggravation for the customers. 65% of customers agree that it is the largest flaw of the customer support system.
8) Being told to head to the website for efficient service: This is a common routine in most contact centers. While the customer is on hold or in IVR, an automated message is played that directs the caller to visit the website for efficient service. Here, organizations fail to comprehend that the customers must have visited the website prior to call. Or simply prefer calling or have a unique query that cannot be resolved via the FAQ section. Organizations do this to improve traffic in their websites, but ultimately kills customer experience.
9) Agents promises they will get back to you, but never do: Not all problems can be resolved in the first call. There will be queries that require additional information or authority to execute. Customers hang up the call expecting the agents to call back once they are equipped with the tools and information. But, they never do.
10) Rude Customer Support: Call Center agents’ job is to serve customer concerns and complaints, and it might not be their fault if an issue arises or a mix-up happens. But the agents need to remember they are getting paid to manage concerns and complaints, while customers have already paid for the service.
(Also read, How to upgrade your traditional contact center to remote contact center?)
By avoiding these common customer aggravations, contact centers have the opportunity to really improve customer support by building their customer service skills and implementing the intelligent call center software. Now that you have an idea about the most common frustrations, your task is to deal with them. Since contact centers are customer-centric departments, it is worthwhile to invest on resources and technologies that can help eliminate theses common customer pet peeves.