Why Bother Having a Live Customer Service Rep?

Following a discussion at the 4th Customer Experience Summit in Miami, Fl, I deemed this article relevant for a renewed publishing. A discussion during a Monday afternoon workshop focused on the shortcomings of channels like online chat, noting that they prioritize gimmick or technology over customer-centricity. Because I know how valuable it can be, I, personally, cringe everytime I hear pundits and professionals rip the concept of online chat. But given the tendency of so many businesses to treat chat no differently than a self-service channel, as a forum for disseminating generic, impersonal information, I can understand the negative sentiment.

For chat--or any other channel to work--it must be both consistent with the brand and consistent with customer expectations. Customers are approaching chat because they expect instantaneous, documented interactions with REAL people. If you cannot deliver your brand message appropriately in accordance with that mindset, you have no business offering live chat support.

Sue me, I like the idea of live chat. In an era of doing almost everything on a computer, live chat is very conductive to multi-tasking. It is great for record-keeping. It allows me to easily look up account and transaction information as I interact with customer service. It helps flesh out issues and argumentation for swifter resolution.

All of these benefits, however, hinge on the validity of a central assumption—that the company’s live chat service will be manned by human customer service representatives. Live chat is not about automation or self-service—it is about taking the personal interaction of one-on-one customer service and situating it within the simple, convenient world of online computing.

The second live chat stops feeling like a conversation is the second the medium becomes worthless as a customer service channel.

Today’s customer knows what an online, textual conversation should entail. He almost definitely has a wealth of experience on AOL Instant Messenger, text messaging, Blackberry Messaging, Google Chat or Facebook Chat. He knows that the dialogue, though casual and occasionally short-handed, still must be organic and real. He, similarly, has no reason to blindly accept dialogue that is stilted, robotic and emotionless as evidence he matters to the person on the other end.

I have encountered enough positive live chat rollouts to maintain my faith in the channel. But the negative experiences I have had, and there have been several, remain categorically unacceptable for those companies who claim they are truly committed to providing a multi-channel experience and not simply trying to spruce up their "contact us" pages.

And so while my blood wants to boil when I read articles or listen to podcasts ripping on live chat, my brain will simply not allow me to overreact. I get the frustration.

Just this past weekend, in fact, I dealt with one of the most maddening live chat experiences possible, featuring one of the most unprepared, robotic customer service representatives on any corporate payroll. Because a second rep quickly and correctly resolved my issue, I do not hold major ill-will towards the software company with which I interacted and will not out the organization, but the first rep did reveal, quite resoundingly, why live chat still has a long way to go.

My Issue:

I purchased a one-year license for a major PC software application via a third-party source. The license was successfully validated during my installation of the software, but after about an hour of use, I received an alert message saying the security key "could not be validated." My software was thus deactivated. As a crucial system utility, it was urgent that I get the software re-activated.

Seems simple enough. All live chat support needed to do was assure my security key was validated in the database or, alternatively, explain why my key was not being validated and provide me with the corrective course of action.

Somehow, after fifteen minutes, the first live chat rep with whom I interacted could not make any progress whatsoever. Clearly a "robot rep," rather than one who actually knows the product and can think, she simply could not process my issue, presumably because it was slightly different than what is written in the internal help database.

Repeatedly, the rep offered some variation of, "So, to clarify, you tried to activate the software with a product key and it would not let you do so." Repeatedly. You read my issue above—is that what I said happened?

Instead of actually engaging in a discussion with the customer, the representative was thinking in terms of robotic "standards." Perhaps because her ability to resolve problems hinges on her sifting through a self-help database or relaying the issue to a different department, she refused to accept the nuance of my problem. The issue had to fit into a box. In essence, she wanted to serve as a slow, convoluted self-service tool, which wholly contradicts the nature of her role as a live agent.

Further, even after I provided my baseline information (what version of the product I used and what happened), she could not process this break from the "order" of a usual support inquiry. I’d firmly established what happened and when it happened, and yet even after receiving that information, she returned to basic qualifying questions like, "What version of the product are you using?" and "On what computer is the product installed?" I’d already given her the answers, and yet she repeatedly re-asked the questions.

I took this type of questioning as a signal that she was going through some sort of internal database predicated on the entry of "standard" data; that database would not let her skip ahead to the "problem" portion. Again, this is not why I wanted to speak to a live rep—I am capable of filling out a self-service form.

Just think about it logically—if you drive over a nail and ask AAA to come fix your flat tire, you expect someone to understand the issue (a sharp object punctured the tire) and fix it. What if, before fixing the tire, the AAA mechanic asked you, "What is the make and model of the car?..Where did you buy it?...At approximately what speed where you driving when this happened?...Who else was in the car?...How many flat tires have you had previously?" All while looking at a car with a nail in its tire.

When dealing with a live rep, the customer qualifies the issue by explaining the issue in a human, back-and-forth discussion. Obviously, some follow-up questions will be necessary, but those follow-up questions should be customized for relevance to the issue in question. They should treat the customer as a person with a specific, unique issue—not like the generic "user" for whom the help files are programmed.

The real kicker? When I ended up switching to a second rep (I accidentally closed out the chat window), I got the relevant answer in 30 seconds: we’re having trouble with one of our validation servers, and so when live update initiates on newly-installed software, the security key will not be recognized and the program will be de-activated. The issue was to be resolved within 24 hours.

Clearly, the team knew about this issue. How, then, was it possible that for a live rep to spend fifteen minutes in a conversation about a software validation problem without considering the server issue as a likely culprit? Was it because it’s not a standard issue in the help file or self-service database, and the rep knows to always look there—never in her own brain—for answers? That’s exactly why I chose to interact with a live agent.

CMIQ has published a number of articles from pundits, including Tripp Babbitt, who criticize concepts like IVR and self-service for their lack of ability to deal with variance in customer inquiries. Here is an example of a live agent showing the same ineptitude—to her, all customer service inquiries must fit into a rigid box, and if they cannot, they are very difficult to address.