Many years ago in the 70’s and 80’s, it was common to witness or hear about poor standards of customer service in retail locations in the UK. The USA then being used as a positive example of a country with better service in shops.
In my opinion, things changed a long time ago in the UK with smiling and chatty staff who genuinely want to help in retail locations. Face to face customer service is pretty good these days and I find it rare to come across anyone being deliberately rude or unhelpful.
The issue nowadays is you are more likely to receive poor customer service by companies who are over reliant on online chat tools.
Some online chat is of course AI, used to further reduce the numbers of advisors providing phone support. Not necessarily a bad thing if it works and you still source enough staff to support all queries that need actual human responses (rather than AI).
Some questions are more ideal for AI such as journey times rather than difficult issues needing human intervention.
The trouble is that many companies are offering chat as a replacement to phone advisors and then provide a poor customer experience.
A recent simple query of mine that should have lasted a few minutes by phone, took over an hour via online chat. This was a company that has virtually removed all contact centre phone support. Each time I awaited a response, updates would be slow. No doubt an under resourced department whereby the technology is being used by staff juggling too many contacts at once.
These same companies will also excuse themselves for the time that exchanges take by taking the stance that you can do other things while you wait. Is this really acceptable? In my opinion “no” and it is not always easy to do other things as you don’t want to miss a response and then have the chat drop.
These same companies also then tend to treat sales and support differently by investing in sales and neglecting the after sales care.
Technology shouldn’t be used to make after sales support difficult. Companies need to focus on being contactable in efficient and easy ways, whether it be voice, chat or email.
Technology to support queries by AI should also only be used if it actually works as it can be infuriating if you don’t get the help and support needed. If you are using AI, it needs infrastructure supporting all the data it needs to provide answers. Likewise, any company using online chat with staff to service queries, don’t under resource expecting staff to juggle multiple chats. It should be a flowing chat experience like a conversation.
A lot of work needs carrying out by many companies nowadays to improve online chat. If you invest in your after sales technologies to support customer queries, it will help retain customers.
Let’s hope some companies see the light as many will take their business elsewhere if they don’t get the best service. Using chat can be a good thing if implemented correctly.
Do you have any examples of technology stopping you from gaining a good experience? Let us know in the comments.
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