We are reaching a point where smart phone penetration is reaching saturation and where consumers are spending in excess of �100billion online every year. So why, given that that digital is now mainstream, do so many large brands seem to lack a coherent and consistent approach to providing customer service online?
Let’s contrast three key types of digital communications and how they are been used in a customer services context by some major UK brands I have used over the past 2 weeks:
Well known UK brands like Habitat will happily not respond to two of my emails yet they are rather good at engaging with customers via Twitter and actually seem to have 2 teams of people dedicated to the task. The fact that I had chosen email as my channel of communication rather than Twitter seemed incidental to Habitat, I would recommend removing their email enquiry form and replacing it with a Twitter feed in order to support THEIR preference for social customer service!
ASOS seem rather good at online service but forgot to tell me that I needed to follow them if I was to read their responses to my enquiries � remember e-tailers � not everyone has a PhD in Tweeting. Don’t forget to help your audience adopt and easily use new forms and channels of digital communication.
HMRC recently called for customers to Tweet tax enquiries which is odd as those tweeting @HMRCcustomers may have already made one of the 34.5% of calls were cut off.
Note to organisations � sort your existing channels of communication and service out first before being tempted to develop new ones.
I have had to come to terms with the fact that many organisations still find it acceptable not to respond to communications from customers via email � I find this quite shocking personally. I have found Habitat to be a repeat offender in this area but many organisations seem to rate email communication handling below other channels � even Twitter which has been around for less time.
Focus on getting one channel of digital communications working before attempting to establish another
Livechat
I recently used O2 Livechat facility and found it very responsive, the agent (aka human) was very helpful. I am impatient so for me Livechat solicits the immediate response I like. Other Live chat facilities seem to completely miss this key benefit, one major high street bank seems to make users wait to speak to someone, they also require you to be in the same screen so that if you are looking at another web page you miss the response and have to wait again, very poor.
My 4’T”s for successful online customer service
For me there are four important things any organisation delivering customer service online (or off for that matter) must get right in terms of e-comms:
- Talk to me
Clear and concise communication is imperative, if you listen to me then I might tell you that I don’t want to use this communication channel at all so please stop forcing me to!
- Tell me what’s going on
There is little more frustrating for a consumer than no knowing what the status of an order, query or complaint is. In so many cases of bad customer service, I believe that if you tell a customer the truth and establish and maintain an honest dialogue then many IT software crashes and capacity issues will be forgiven.
- Time events
Provide time frames for events, don’t leave the consumer guessing or use ASAP’s. Failure to provide time-frames leads to a lack of confidence and uncertainty regarding what will happen when.
- Take ownership
When I contact an organisation through any channel I want to know that my request or query is going to be dealt with through my communication channel of choice
So come on brands, make 2015 the year you get customer service communications online right.