Customer service is not so much about products or artificial intelligence. It’s all about human connections.
If you ever want to talk to a customer service……
“Welcome to … This call may be monitored or recorded.”
……
“To verify you are trying to reach …, please press 1.”
……
“You are now in our touch-tone system.”
“To activate speech-enabled system, please press star at any time or say speech”
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“You are now in our speech-enabled system. To switch back to our touch-tone system, press star at any time.”
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“How would you like to access your account information?”
“To use your account number, press 1.”
“To use your social security number, press 2.”
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“Please enter your account number as shown on your credit card or your credit card bill statement”
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“Please enter the last four digits of the primary card holder’s social security number now.”
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“Question about your account? Type in … we will be more than happy to assist. The standard rate may apply.”
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“If you would like your balance and payment information, press 1.”
“If not, press 2.”
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“To make a payment, press 1.”
“To repeat your account balance information, press 2.”
“To continue, press 3.”
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“In a few words, please tell us what you are calling about.”
“If you are calling about …, press 1.”
“If you are calling about …, press 2.”
“If you are calling about …, press 3.”
“If you are calling about …, press 4.”
“If you are calling about …, press 5.”
“If you are calling about …, press 6.”
“If you are calling about …, press 7.”
“For anything else, press 8.”
……
“Please choose one of the following options”
“For …, press 1.”
“For …, press 2.”
“For …, press 3.”
“For …, press 4.”
“Go back to the main menu, press 5.”
……
“Please tell us, what else would you like to do.”
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“You want a customer service representative, right?” (machine voice)
“Are you calling because you are concerned about …? If so, press 1. Otherwise, press 2.”
(machine voice)
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“To better direct your call, please tell us what you are calling about.” (again, machine voice)
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“Thank you for calling …, due to the high call volume, your estimated waiting time is 50 minutes.”
?!!!
What’s this?
When customers call, they want three things to come through: their issues, their voices, and their emotions.
They want their issues to be taken care of, they want to be heard, and they want their anxiety or frustration to be eased.
They want a human-to-human conversation, not 50 minutes later but NOW, period.
Consider each inbound call as a vector with momentum. It needs to flow.
Firms can either channel the flow to the right customer services or barricade it with a machine voice.
When the momentum flows in the right direction, it turns into something beautiful – truthful insights into customer needs and a genuine rapport with happy customers.
When the momentum gets stuck, however, it will surely turn into something unsettling – the loss of consumer insights, the walk-away of loyal customers, and the gain of unwanted popularity in social media.
There has been this concept that marketing is a funnel. Firms spend a fortune to attract indifferent prospects into the top, hoping that a fraction of these prospects will fall through the funnel and become customers.
Yet, when these customers get to bottom of the funnel and want to engage, firms carve out a big hole there to usher them all out.
They deem these customers as errors, troublemakers, and cost, failing to realize that these are their very assets in disguise.
It’s ironic that firms spend a fortune to buy customers’ attention, yet cut it short when customers are ready to talk. They do it in the way ever so ‘smart’ that only smart customers can find their way and finally get their voice heard. When customers have to Google for customer service numbers, Youtube for advice on how to talk to a real person, and Quora for tips on how to cut through machine voices, loops, choices, and unexpected exits, something goes terribly wrong.
At the end of the day, customer service is really not so much about the products or the artificial intelligence. It’s all about human connections.
When firms erase this human factor out of the equation, there is really not that much left.