7 Clues Your Organization Doesn't Value Customer Service

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It’s unlikely a major corporate executive will go on record with the statement “We don’t care about our customer service.”  But actions speak louder than words, and the behavior of many organizations reveals that they, indeed, do not fully value the importance of customer service.

The new Davies Hickman report “The Big Switch” identifies the rise of a “cut-back customer service culture” as a problem facing customer-facing organizations.  Those who have fallen victim to the spell of the cut-back culture adhere to a “no service is good service” motto, for which the objective is to minimize interactions between company and customer.

Understanding the desire to ‘cut back’ customer service

Naturally, these organizations either explicitly see customer service as a “cost function” or at least fail to see it as a source of positive value.  Instead of seeing customer service interactions as springboards to greater, more lucrative relationships with the market, they view them as retroactive signs of failure.

Whether the customer is “failing” or the product is “failing,” the result is a wasteful interaction.  Where possible, cut-back customer service advocates believe the actual product design should greatly minimize the need for customers to seek support.  And when they do need support, the customer service framework should be designed in a way that minimizes the need for “costly” communication between live agents and customers.

Though customer management enthusiasts might hate to admit it, there is, technically, justification for a cut-back culture.  “Correlating customer service event satisfaction with revenue has proven inconsistent across industries,” explains “The Big Switch,” which adds that metrics like Net Promoter Score are also far from definitive in measuring the actual impact of service on customer loyalty and advocacy.  Those who are looking for a reason to doubt the value of customer service can find ammunition in the lack of definitive research.

Similarly, insofar as many customers have reacted favorably to social media communication and self-service (which theoretically reduce how much “service” the company has to provide), customer service detractors can make a case that the customers themselves are fine with a cut-back culture.

Signs the company doesn’t fully value customer service

If a cut-back culture indeed dictates the mindset of the organization, certain aspects of the customer service process will transform.  Notably, the customer management strategy will fixate on ways to minimize company-customer interactions and maximize the perceived “efficiency,” accepting the potential consequences on customer satisfaction and CRM (seen as minimal, in both cases, since the cut-back culture defines service interactions as retroactive “failure” calls rather than proactive opportunities to build engaging relationships).

Common manifestations of a cut-back call center strategy:

Emphasis on consistency and reduction of Average Handle Time (AHT)

Though the AHT metric is not exclusive to organizations with a cut-back customer service culture, such companies frame the metric in a very specific way.  They see AHT as a golf score, and thus see a consistently lower AHT as a sign of success.  Similarly, they look for minimal talk time variance across the spectrum of customer interactions to assure every call is, in their minds, efficient and productive.

Keeping service queues long

In the spirit of keeping operations lean and overhead minimal, cut-back organizations staff their call centers in ways that make lengthy queues inevitable.  But this is seen as a good thing, not a bad thing, since intolerance of lengthy wait times will discourage customers from calling for support and thus minimize the interactions the organization sees as wholly undesirable anyway.

Installing dead-ends within the IVR

While immensely valuable for many organizations, even the best IVR systems prioritize efficiency over the power of a live agent interaction.  Cut-back organizations specifically value dead-ends in IVRs, since these at least create a theoretical barrier to customer issues spilling their way onto the phones of live agents.  Organizations might sell IVR dead-ends as a “commitment to the self-service culture so many customers demand,” and that could be partially valid, but the real intent is clear—if the IVR can either entirely solve the customers problems or frustrate them enough to prevent them from calling support, it helps reduce live interactions.

Directing customers to self-service

As with IVR, there is a difference between the introduction of a self-service philosophy that directly responds to customer demand and imposing one that keeps call center costs down.  Cut-back organizations follow the latter philosophy—instead of introducing self-service as an “option” designed because it can explicitly improve the customer experience for customers, it is introduced as a cost-efficiency “checkpoint” specifically to pre-empt inquiries from those users who would otherwise call for support.

Drive customers to “community” (social) support

Engaging customers via social media can be very customer-centric—if the organization makes the proper time, resource and cultural investment into the platform.  Cut-back organizations, however, use “community” support as a way to keep customers away from their own resources.   If an educated user can draw from his knowledge and experience to help a customer solve a problem or better understand a policy, it keeps that customer off the phone.

No “callbacks” or outbound check-ins

Within cut-back organizations, customer service is viewed as retroactive and “when necessary only”—the interactions do not carry intrinsic value.  Given that sentiment, these organizations want to discourage, rather than encourage, dialogue between live agent and customer.  They do not allow their agents to return unanswered calls or “call back” to check-in on an inquiry, and they do not staff their call centers with outbound representatives who proactively connect with customers.

Keep call center agent salaries low

Seen as a “cost center,” further investment into the call center is not really an option for cut-back organizations, so rep salaries need to remain low.  Adherence to a low salary also emphasizes how little value the organization places on customer interactions and thus frames customer service as “retroactive support” rather than “proactive engagement.”

*Manifestations based on “The Big Switch” but exclusively synthesized, categorized and analyzed by CMIQ.

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Contributor:   Brian Cantor

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