IMAGINE yourself being the 27th caller in a queue waiting to talk to a customer relations or call centre representative for a service you want changed or cancelled. How would you react?
Lina (not her real name) could not believe her ears when told she was the 27th caller waiting. She just hung up, went online and changed her entertainment package.
It was not a smooth transaction online as the website was not customer-friendly but it was far better than waiting her turn on her mobile phone.
In another incident, Yap moaned and groaned while dialling 30 times to reach his bank over a 45-minute period before he eventually spoke to a customer care rep to sort out details of his credit card.
Thangam went ballistic and dialled a travel agent instead after six tries to an airline. “I was disgusted as this message – ‘your call is in the queue ...it is important to us...’” – repeated over and over. Can’t the person come online; why keep me waiting?” she asked.
These are just be a few incidents of disgruntled people that were trying to reach some organisations to air their grouses but getting your problems heard these days can be an unfruitful traipse around the mulberry bush.
Most often your challenge will be to get the organisation to answer, then you may have to press a dozen numbers and hold until someone is free to attend to your call. This can take a while if there are too few call reps and too many calls.
For companies that have opted for automated self-help transactions, the issue is having to press many numbers and should you hit a wrong number, you have to repeat the whole process. Besides the cost of making the calls, the customer suffers the loss of precious time while his patience is tested.
Is the automated world rendering it difficult to reach a human being who can attend to your query or handle your problem? While automated messages are good for simple transactions, you simply get irritated if you have to listen to “press 1 to ...10” to get to the right section and then press a sequence of a dozen or so other numbers to activate the self-help transaction.
Big words about customer care don’t mean a thing if the organisation has no time to listen and pushes customers to an automated self-serve system.
Outsourcing to call centres allows companies to save money and time and that’s fine if the service is up to the mark but not all transactions should be automated.
Companies should have more reliable platforms for consumers to air their grouses and minimise waiting time. In some cases, humans should replace automated systems for the personal touch as people like to talk to people, not machines.
Train the workforce as a rude rep can easily damage the image of a company as the rep is often the first touch point for any company.Most importantly, if companies want to have automated, self-serve transactions, make them simple. Devise a way for people to get connected faster and reach the point sooner than going a circuitous route.
Make customers wait once too often and you will succeed in driving them away.
The Star Friday...
Deputy news editor B.K. Sidhu believes that talking to people, rather than machines, makes all the difference.
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