Balancing Technology & The Personal Touch in Customer Service

The other day, I had to make two personal customer service calls. They were both follow-up calls to two companies that had promised me refunds from a recent trip (after bad service), but had not yet delivered.

I had two very different experiences.

For the first – a rental car company – I got a live person almost right away. He understood my question, asked a few back, and then processed the request. He even sounded like he cared that there had been a mix-up. My previously delayed refund arrived within two days. It was easy, as it should have been.

The other was a different story. To start, the airline made it nearly impossible to find a phone number on its website (in contrast to the car company, which had more than a dozen numbers listed on its customer service page online). When I finally did find the number and selected “refunds” in the call menu, I discovered it was impossible to get a real person on the phone in an area I would think it would be critical to have a real person. When I eventually made my way to the “reservations” department, the service rep there told me a refund request could only be processed via an online form or by mailing my request to the company. Remember, this is a request I had already made and had been told I would receive.

What’s more, the airline’s service rep seemed surprised I had talked to someone about the refund on the company’s support line in the past.

Everyone has their customer service horror stories. Technology has both helped and hurt in the resolution of those issues.

Take the example of an old friend, who told me recently she had called a phone company to find out why her Internet was not working – and instead of a real person, the response system kept telling her the only way for her to log her support request was by email.

McKinsey, in its McKinsey Quarterly online newsletter, noted that while standard responses to eliminate human error through IT systems, CRM or complex protocols may smooth simple customer interactions, “pure technological solutions can never stoke the emotional connection between employee and customer.”

A negative emotional response can certainly result if technology and a personal touch aren’t balanced.

How can you improve your customer service interactions? First, understand which interactions are most critical to your service proposition. McKinsey recommends mapping out the points of interaction your frontline employees have with your customers to determine where you can make improvements and where, perhaps, you might be losing an opportunity to gain loyalty.

The example McKinsey presents is in airlines. There are about 30 potential service interactions – including reservations, upgrade requests, check-in, boarding procedures and baggage handling. “All offer the potential for moments when something goes so badly wrong that a customer defects,” McKinsey reports. And just a few provide positive moments that may intensify a company’s loyalty to a carrier. Depending on your customer base or value proposition, the number of potential service interactions and opportunities for loyalty building may be even higher.

McKinsey contends you can build skills in your frontline employees to improve the service they are offering, and in turn more effectively take advantage of these interactions. Some of the characteristics you’re looking for or should aim to build in a work force: a strong sense of self-empowerment and self-regulation; a positive outlook; and empathy for customer experiences.

But beyond hiring the right people in the first place, this article provides some practical suggestions to build these skills and mindsets in current employees. Read the McKinsey article here.

And here are some thoughts on customer service from Jonathan Byrnes, whose blog is run on mdm.com: Stumbling on Customer Service