I had a typically frustrating experience with my bank's customer support center today (and I say typical not in reference to my bank, but to calling customer support lines in general). I tried to make a credit card payment, and thought I successfully had, but it never seemed to go through. Read: I was trying to give my credit card company money, but to no avail. After multiple attempts I called in to see what I was doing wrong. Upon reaching a representative (success!), I had to recount exactly what I had done online—what I had clicked, any error messages I saw or did not see, the last page I was on. This all amounted to a 10 minute phone call where my question of “what did I do wrong?” was never answered. Instead, I was walked through the “correct” way to make online payments.
Upon going through the payment process again after the call, I finally realized that when I clicked from one credit card's statement to pay the bill, the site was taking me to a payment page for a credit card that I was no longer using and not trying to pay—a technical issue on their end that I imagine others were also encountering. By the time I figured this out, I had already incurred a late fee and had no way to prove the issue that was preventing me from making a payment online. It’s enough to make one question the real time savings of online bill pay...
I know that my bank cares about my satisfaction and wants to keep my business. But this seemed like a highly inefficient process, and one which I experience on most calls to customer support lines. I don't usually get my question resolved and often end up being the agent’s diagnostic tool, an exasperating process.
And I'm not alone.
Our 2009 Harris survey confirmed that the contact center experience is far from positive.
- 38% of all online adults contacted a company's contact center after encountering problems using the company’s web site.
- But the contact center falls short when it comes to resolving customer issues—among those who have reached out to the contact center, 37% said their issue was NOT resolved, and 67% said the agent was NOT knowledgeably about the web site.
- The result of a bad contact center experience is extreme: 39% said they experienced bad customer service from a company's contact center after reaching out due to a site problem. As a result, 45% of those customers completely stopped doing business with the company.
Nearly half of all customers will potentially stop doing business with you if they have a bad experience transitioning from web to phone—sounds like an opportunity for improvement to me! Most companies now realize that customers have touched various channels before calling in, whether it was an in-store visit, an online visit, an email campaign...you name it. These companies also realize that the phone channel remains critical to a customer's overall experience. The real challenges are connecting the dots between these channels, and ensuring a positive experience across all customer touch points.
Chances are, I’m going to be able to use the web site for many transactions with a company—be it banking or otherwise—but sometimes you just need to call and talk to a live person. Wouldn’t it be great if that person knew exactly what you had 'done online? I can only hope that more customer support organizations will adopt that technology (yes, it exists!), because without it they're missing out on a large piece of the customer experience puzzle.
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