If Digital Customer Service Channels Are So Important, Why Are They So Lousy?
Companies are offering more non-voice channels for customer service than ever before. This shift is great - except when you try to use them.
I’ve encountered many poorly designed service experiences when working with customer service teams in a variety of industries, but I’ll start by describing recent interactions with my local utility companies to underscore a common pattern.
I was getting two power and gas bills for my new house, so I needed to make what I thought was a simple request to receive only one bill from each company.
To my relief, both service providers offered messaging via their websites, so I put in a request through that channel: I have a single property, but I’m getting two bills. Please combine them.
Easy enough, right?
Apparently not. Instead of addressing my problem, both companies sent back generic responses telling me to call their contact center during normal business hours — the exact thing I was trying to avoid. It left me wondering why they even offered the email option.
Truth be told, digital, non-voice channels are often a mirage in the desert of poor customer experience (CX). When we have analyzed such channels for our clients, we regularly see that 60-70% of interactions end with the customer being instructed to call instead. In industry parlance, this change in direction is sometimes referred to as an “involuntary channel switch.”
That’s not only a customer service failure - it’s bad business.
The Changing Customer Service Landscape
Driven in part by younger consumers and the pandemic, expectations for customer service interactions are shifting rapidly. Consider a few facts from the “Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2021” that illustrate how millennial and Gen Z buyers differ from older consumers:
With so many younger consumers demonstrating a preference for these channels, companies know they need to adapt. Amazon figured it out ages ago, even going so far as to make it difficult to find their phone number for support.
But adaptation doesn’t mean simply offering alternative channels. For better customer support, these channels need to be carefully designed to resolve – rather than prolong – customer problems.
The Hidden Costs of Poor Non-Voice Support for Businesses
Consider the matter from another angle: What’s the cost of offering poor or limited support on non-voice channels?
When I had to contact a major wireless provider to try to get my son’s mobile number ported, what started out as a promising experience quickly turned cumbersome.
Although I was able to make some progress with an online agent, they had to transfer me to another online agent when things got complicated. Eventually, that agent forced me to switch to phone support. After I’d already spent half an hour on chat, I had to wait another 30 minutes on hold before re-explaining the issue to the phone agent. At that point, I had lost an hour of my day, and the company had paid three different support agents to deal with my issue.
So, what are the costs? First, that company should consider the damage to customer loyalty that comes with all that service baggage. When a customer feels they’re exerting unnecessary effort and spending an unreasonable amount of time dealing with a support request, they’re bound to wonder if they can get better service elsewhere. There has been a lot of recent research about the correlation between customer effort and customer loyalty.
On top of the long-term possibility of lost revenue, there are direct costs. An experienced live chat agent can handle four to six customers at once, while a phone support agent can handle only one. That makes offering live chat a huge opportunity to reduce customer service costs. But, as we’ve seen, many of these chat support teams aren’t equipped to offer support that resolves customer issues. In other words, companies often build the digital teams to reduce costs and end up experiencing the opposite. They’re paying twice (a chat and a phone call) for a customer service need that used to require just one touch (the phone call), and aggravating the customer in the process.
Digital Support Channels Need Intentionality, Not Just More Technology
My experiences with poor support outside of traditional voice channels are, unfortunately, more the rule than the exception. The reason? Many companies haven’t thoughtfully designed the service experience for digital support channels like chat, text, social media, and email. They know they need it, but they offer half-hearted Band-Aid solutions.
I’m often shocked to see the contrast between what companies invest in their voice vs. non-voice channels. On the voice side, there’s so much time and money spent on interactive voice response (IVR) mapping and integration, staff quality and coaching, and system testing and monitoring. The chat agents, meanwhile, often have more limited workforce management, knowledge resources, process documentation, monitoring and coaching in place. Without such investment, a chat agent’s only function is often to route people to phone support.
In many cases, the solution isn’t necessarily about adding more technology — it’s about intentionality. Businesses need to be as intentional about designing non-phone CX as they are about designing for phone CX.
Here are three ideas on where to start:
Aggressively Track Channel Switch
The old adage is “you can’t manage what you can’t see.” Most companies simply don’t realize how ineffective their digital channels are. Start by making channel switch a tracked metric for alternate channels.
Create a Contact Reason Expansion Roadmap
Make a list of what cannot be done on the alternate channels. Then, quantify the volumes associated with each of those items. Identify three or four higher-volume service inquiries that can’t be resolved via a digital channel today and then build a plan to equip the customer service teams to handle those items in the future. A good starting goal might be one or two inquiry types per quarter.
Engage and Equip Non-Phone Agents
Think about all the ways that phone agents are supported. In many contact centers, support takes the form of scheduling and other workforce management tools, quality monitoring and coaching, and training and knowledge management. Identify those ways in which the digital agents are getting resources that are inferior to phone agents and then adjust accordingly.
These new forms of business-and-customer interaction aren’t going anywhere, and customer expectations for them are only going to get higher. Ultimately, businesses that treat digital CX channels with the same care as traditional ones will be poised to stay a step ahead in the years to come.
If you’re interested in discussing why businesses need to prioritize designing for digital support channels, let’s connect.
I’m active on LinkedIn or you can reach my office at 920.691.6440 or email dwoods@voyageadvisory.com.