Over the course of the year, the CEB Customer Contact research team receives scores of questions from service leaders on every topic imaginable: from what to call frontline reps to how to create a Chief Customer Office role.
Recently, our team fielded a couple of questions that all center around one basic concern: “If a contact center has caused an error on behalf of a customer, what should it do to make it right?”
To us, it’s not surprising that this has been a popular question of late. It seems as if customers are increasingly eager to publicize service interactions gone wrong, and as a result, many service leaders are horrified to imagine what a service-related public relations nightmare could look like for their own company.
Since it’s a question on everyone’s minds, I thought I’d talk about a couple of quick ideas and thoughts from our research team.
Error Management 101:
Let’s get started with some basic error management strategies. Generally speaking, we’ve found that companies use three basic complaint or error resolution methods in the event that the company has caused a mistake:
- Apologize
- Give Assistance (e.g., assistance in fixing or resolving the problem)
- Give Monetary or non-Monetary Compensation
As you can imagine, apologies alone are the easily the least effective method of error management. This is something that CEB Customer Contact saw firsthand in our research last year on customer baggage (by baggage, we mean customers who have had past service experiences that may negatively affect the current interaction). We found then that customers are rarely satisfied with empathy or apologies alone and instead, are far more likely to rate an interaction as low-effort if the rep acknowledges past issues, is transparent about the situation, and takes ownership of the current issue (more on this below)
Therefore, a combination of assistance and compensation is the most effective in regaining the trust of the customer immediately after an error has occurred. This does, however, depend on the level of severity of the problem.
Low severity – With low-severity mistakes, customers tend to gain the same level of satisfaction from receiving just assistance or just compensation as opposed to receiving both.
High severity – With high-severity mistakes, customers tend to gain the most satisfaction by obtaining both assistance and compensation.
Don’t Lose Track of Customers You’ve Wronged
As mentioned above, our research last year on customer baggage revealed that customers who have had negative past experiences tend to bring that “baggage” into current interactions, and will tend to rate the current interaction more negatively if their baggage is unacknowledged. So while it’s important to manage error recovery as it happens, it is just as important to be aware of customers who have had mistakes happen to them in the past – so that they don’t continue holding it against the current rep they’re on the phone with.
If this is the first time you’ve had the chance to tackle customer baggage, there are two things you can begin with:
- Make use of company systems: To help ensure that reps are immediately aware of customers who may come into the conversation with baggage, we would recommend that service organizations focus on ensuring their systems are capable of tracking baggage and pulling this information forward as much as possible.
- Train your reps to handle baggage: Reps who know how to handle customer baggage can help ensure that customers who have bad experiences in the past don’t let those experiences affect the current interaction. Our Rep Baggage-Handling Tool, which features tips and advice for reps on how to deal with customers with baggage (e.g., acknowledging baggage, taking ownership, being transparent, etc.), can be a great guide to help your reps get started with basic baggage-handling skills.
Turning Upset Customers Around
Unfortunately, sometimes there isn’t much a contact center can do in the moment for a customer who’s been wronged. However, a great way to manage extremely dissatisfied customers after an error has occurred is to simply ask for their feedback.
National Australia Bank (NAB), a major financial institution in Australia and New Zealand, selects group of frontline staff to place outbound calls specifically to customers who have expressed severe recent dissatisfaction in a post-transaction survey. These reps use the calls to gather feedback about what went wrong and to root-cause how the problem can be addressed in order to prevent any future complaints. The calls have not only helped turn around dissatisfied customers (who are pleasantly surprised that the company sincerely cares about their direct feedback), but have also led to improvement in issue resolution rates and customer satisfaction.
What does your service organization do for customers who’ve been through the gauntlet? We’d love to hear your approach in the comments below.