From lack of professionalism, through dishonesty, to unavailability: the 10 main problems organizations face in customer service. These are issues that every organization that provides customer service wants to eradicate, and that every single customer has experienced at least once
How many times have you encountered telephone or in-person customer service that is bad or ineffective? How many times have you met a service provider who lied to you to close the deal? Is this how customer service needs to be? We decided to list 10 of the main problems in customer service, but it is important to note that every problem has a solution. Every organization that understands the connection between service and “serving the bottom line” will attempt to figure out the points where it is deficient and find a solution that will be to everyone’s benefit.
Lack of professionalism – Service representatives are not well versed in the procedures, products and solutions that they possess. This lack of meaningful information leads to more “noise” from the customer, to unnecessarily repeated inquiries, and, of course, to dissatisfaction.
Solution: Constant monitoring of agents and training to close professionalism gaps.
Failure to meet obligations – The service representative promises the customer something but does not follow through, which of course causes frustration, anger, and disappointment.
Solution: Increase the agents’ awareness regarding the closure of inquiries and managing the customer’s file through to completion. Inquiries should not be left open. Repeated requests should be examined and their origins determined.
Dishonesty – What do sales and service representatives who want to get their commissions do to close the deal? Mislead the customer. Deliberately. Of course, this is not a sweeping generalization and most representatives will not intentionally mislead the client, but you can encounter the occasional representative who will give inaccurate, unsuitable, or even incorrect information.
Solution: Call recording and random spot checks. Even customers long ago learned to record conversations in the event of future need.
Evasion – Similar to deception, the avoiding of an honest and true answer is bad. A representative who repeatedly evades a customer’s questions is a representative who does not know how to talk to customers or is not familiar with the materials and the data he is supposed to provide.
Solution: Teach the representative all the up-to-date organizational materials, test him occasionally with group dynamics and the ability to deal with updates in “real time” without getting exhausted.
Insults – If the representative uses unpleasant, disrespectful, or even insulting language, the customer feels that a red line has been crossed.
Solution: The team leader or division manager must get to know his employees and identify the “bad apples” on his team. Such a representative must not continue in his duties.
Lack of empathy – A customer service representative listens to hundreds of calls a day and talks with thousands of people each week. He doesn’t really know them or develop deep relationships with them – and that’s fine. But even a call of 5-10 minutes requires the representative to be sensitive and responsive. If he expresses a lack of empathy and is disrespectful to the customer, he is broadcasting that the company doesn’t care about the customer, and from there, the path to losing the customer permanently is very short.
Solution: The representatives must adopt a culture of sensitive and positive speech, and radiate empathy with the customer (even if in fact they do not feel anything).
Lack of attentiveness – The service representative who doesn’t listen to his customer, but only “shoots” him the information dictated to him, hurts the bottom line and harms the image of the entire organization.
Solution: The first thing is to listen, to understand the problem, ask questions, gather information and only then give the appropriate response.
Unavailability – The current law does not allow companies that provide service to excessively extend the waiting time on the phone. Yet often, we find ourselves on the line, listening to elevator music and unnecessary advertising for 10, 20 minutes or even much more.
Solution: Don’t exhaust your customers on the line. Give them the option to leave a message with their details and get back to them within a reasonable timeframe.
Lack of accessibility – No parking, no space for disabled people, no path for strollers.
Solution: Very simple and in many cases often even mandatory. Public spaces and service organizations must have their buildings accessible to people with disabilities!
Cost-benefit analysis – Let’s start with the simple fact that no one calls customer service, or physically arrives at the service desk if he does not really need to. The representative needs to understand that the customer contacted him on purpose, and therefore expects some sort of compensation.
Solution: Help your client get an immediate benefit from contacting you.