CCC wrote a blog post for Harvard Business Review’s blog on customer preferences for self-service, research with which CCC members are most likely familiar (click here to read the research). What members might not be as aware of is the visceral reaction this finding has sparked across the customer world. Over the past 48 hours, since the post went live, it has been the #1 most viewed item on the HBR site and has garnered 60 comments on HBR and an additional 58 comments on YCombinator. What’s more, it’s been Tweeted on more than 800 times around the world.
[5 Aug. update: the post has been live for a week now, with more than 80 comments on the HBR site and over 1,000 Tweets worldwide. The blog remains one of the most frequently read pieces of content on the site, currently ranked #3.]
As a service leader, you owe it to yourself to review not just this post, but the comments which it sparked. You are sure to find some eye-opening customer stories and reactions that will dial up the urgency for you and your team as you consider how to improve the customer experience.
Here’s a sampling of the reader comments:
- … for my 2 cents, I would offer that one of the reasons customers don’t like interacting with businesses is thanks to the sheer magnitude of incompetence and mediocrity of the staff businesses have been using as their “face” for the last 20 years.
- Most large companies…do not put a lot of effort into their customer service operations. They see them as cost centers, rather than profit centers. So we can assume, that the average person in this study, tried to do something themselves, and then ended up waiting on hold for service…
- …This is also indicative of many deeper issues in organizations. How much empowerment to most employees have to make decisions and really serve the customer? I choose many times to serve myself because a) the interaction with the representative doesn’t add anything to the experience, and may in fact detract from it, and b) because there is generally nothing that the representatives can do for me that I can’t do for myself…
- … Usually if I am making the phone call or the visit I have tried to deal with the problem myself. I am likely frustrated and want to speak to someone who understands my frustration and genuinely wants to help me. Instead, what I get is an outsourced call center representative who may/or may not speak English, couldn’t care less about me as a customer and is more interested in keeping call time down (and getting me off the phone)… I would much rather self-serve than deal with incompetence and employees who clearly hate their job.
- …I’d like to point out a couple of things. Customers value effective, well-designed self service, not just anything a company slaps together… Poorly designed self service is just as bad, or worse, than the most annoying human service scenarios described by some of the other commentators. What customers value is an interaction (human or automated) that gets them what they want quickly and easily. Companies need to carefully think through both their human and automated service offerings.
What do you think of the stories posted by customers here? What did you find most surprising or eye opening?
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