Customer service has run out of excuses
Guest post: John Crossan, VP & General Manager, Europe, Freshworks
Customers have been patient with their favourite retailers the last year, but that patience could be wearing thin. Recent research from the UK Institute of Customer Service showed that the UK public has had enough of pandemic-related excuses for bad customer service, with a quarter stating that they no longer cut it as an explanation. This is corroborated by Freshworks’ recent State of the Customer Research, which showed that 70% of UK consumers are less likely to be empathetic than they were a year ago if their time is being wasted by customer service. It’s time for businesses to learn from the pandemic and put customer delight at the top of their priority list.
Yesterday’s success is today’s failure
As technology has evolved over the years, so too has customers’ expectations of what constitutes good service. Today, consumers can order a taxi on their phone and instantly have information on who is driving, what type of car it is and how long it will take to reach the destination. Across every industry, customers now expect the same instantaneous detail and personalisation, whether it’s an Amazon delivery or the proximity of a takeaway. If there is indeed a correlation between the evolution of tech and customer service standards, the digital acceleration brought on by the pandemic means that the bar for speed is higher than ever. In fact, research showed that 47% of customers expect a quick response when dealing with customer service teams.
Despite these changes, the fundamentals remain. It is not a mystery to customer service teams what their customers want – for example, ensuring they do not need to restart conversations as they progress through the purchasing journey or that complaints are handled in a timely manner. Retailers need to cement these basics and implement technology, whether chatbots to handle requests instantly or analytics capabilities that provide high levels of personalisation.
Communicate where your customers are, not where they were
As people were unable to access physical shops, they looked for alternative ways to get in touch with brands, which brought out a different side in consumers. Freshworks research found that 23% of UK consumers admitted to telling a lie when dealing with brands to try and get their way, while 25% of customers around the world opted to be extra kind or complimentary to the customer service agent.
Clearly, moving to the digital environment has changed how customers approach their communications. Retailers need to take notice of this change and adapt their customer service systems accordingly. Particularly while some people are hesitant to return to physical stores – globally, 47% of consumers plan to continue interacting with retailers digitally – providing key information and a quick resolution will mean they don’t feel the need to compete with other customers to get the result they want.
Hybrid service for a hybrid customer
But these changes don’t come from nowhere – often, in this context, this means using technology to enhance digital channels. As we saw during the pandemic, this is far more important than having the large customer service centres only possessed by the largest retailers. Over the last year, many smaller shops have closed the gap between them and larger rivals by expanding their multi-channel approach to customer service. For example, simple automation in the form of chatbots, updating websites accordingly and improving online ordering systems, meant that 39% of UK consumers switched to supporting smaller retailers over more established competitors.
Previously the preserve of large retailers with big budgets, AI is increasingly handling customer requests for retailers of all sizes – providing basic information on everything from delivery logistics to stock information. That’s not to discount the role of human customer service teams, which are now freed up to focus on more complex cases. Just like the hybrid world we now live in, humans and digital systems must work seamlessly with each other to be effective in the customer service realm.
Despite temporary sympathy from retailers’ customer bases, consumers are now expecting a response. Customer service teams sit on the front line of these changing attitudes and as we’ve seen from pandemic trends, it can increasingly be the difference between competitors, more so than product quality and range. For retailers to avoid losing customers to industry competitors, it’s time for them to stop the excuses and find ways to prioritise the expectations of the post-Covid consumer.
