Posts tagged Customer Service

How bad customer experience increases customer service calls

If your customers have a bad experience with your brand, they will call customer service. And if your customer service can’t help, say goodbye to having repeat customers. 

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you applied for a specific service.

There is a waiting period for you to get it approved and processed.

They come back to you via your preferred method of communication, email, to let you know that there are some missing documents or information to process your application.

You proactively update all the information and send it back.

Then you wait.

Nothing happens.

You start wondering, Did they see my update? What happens now?

You exercise your patience.

Until one day, you have had it.

And so you recheck your email to see any sign to communicate back with them.

The email they sent you is a “No-Reply” email so when you try to reply and ask about the progress, the email delivery fails.

You notice that there is a note that tells you, “If you require assistance, please contact X.”

Then you find no mention to X’s email or any contact information.

You get frustrated.

Then, you pick up the phone and call customer service.

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Is Customer Experience the same as Customer Service?

I am often asked if Customer Experience is the same as Customer Service when I tell people what I do. 

The short answer is: No. They are not the same. 

Customer service is only one aspect of the customer experience. It’s one interaction with the customer. Customer experience, however, is everything the customer goes through when interacting with a brand. 

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Easy! 5 Steps to handle customer service agents

Let’s talk a little bit about customer service. 

While it’s a very well-known trend to companies and service providers that now is the era on which they compete on customer experience, some of them still go out of their way to disappoint us, customers. 

I wouldn’t say that this is the company’s strategy per se, but it’s more about the customer service agent that you end up dealing with. 
I don’t know about you, but I personally like to avoid interactions with customer service as much as I can… and if I absolutely have to do it, I opt for the e-mail, online chat, etc. I don’t want to do the phone conversation. Maybe it’s because I am a millennial. Maybe not. It’ doesn’t matter. What matters is that the mere thought of having to repeat my story more than once turns me off. I had times on which I had to repeat the same complaint, like 5–10 times to different people, just to get my issue resolved. 

That kind of interaction gets to you. It definitely gets to me. In fact, I resort to my mom in some situations because she has more patience than me when it comes to those customer service conversations. God bless her. Most of the time though I have to do it myself. 

If I am lucky, I would be dealing with a professional who understands how to handle disappointed customers. For the most part, you call customer service either because 1. you have a complaint or 2. you are asking about some information. 

… And here comes the challenge, if I end up with someone from customer service who practically doesn’t give a damn, then, I am screwed. I bet most of you could relate to that. 

So, then comes a question.

How can you ensure the customer service agent would be cooperative and help you without driving you insane? 

I recently learned a trick. Thanks to consumer behavior studies… and I am going to share it with you.

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