Think of the last time you called a company’s toll free number. You probably were greeted by an automated voice that stated the “call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.”
If my calls are monitored, what happens when I get so frustrated that I hang up? In these cases it should be obvious to an observer that my problem was not solved and that unless something changes, I’m left with a very bad taste in my mouth.
Shouldn’t I get a call back from a manager? Shouldn’t I get an apology? Or better yet, a solution to my problem?
If my call is monitored, it should be easy to review, analyze, and solve my problem before calling me back.
Unfortunately, you’ll never get this follow-up phone call. You’re more likely to get a call from a telemarketer than the company with whom you initiated contact.
Imagine your customer’s surprise if you followed up a bad customer experience with a phone call that solved the problem.
Are you monitoring your communications with customers? If not, pull your head out of the sand!
If you are monitoring, do you take action on the problems you see? Please say “yes!”
Taking action by changing your process, training, or scripts is a good thing. Don’t forget, however, about the customers that took the brunt of your mistakes. Get back to them with a solution.
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Jonathan
February 15, 2007
Good article Joe. Most call monitoring systems, phone recorders or voice loggers have the ability to capture Caller ID in those situations and it’s not hard for a supervisor to do a search once a day or week and pull up all such calls and simply use the Caller ID field to call them back and resolve the problem or offer condolences. I work for a company that produces call recording equipment and I have been surprised by how few customers actually use their call recording system for this purpose! I know as a consumer I would be hugely impressed by such a move. I’ve had bad customer support experiences like everyone else, but I’ve never had a positive call back afterwards.
Joe Rawlinson
February 16, 2007
Jonathan: Thanks for sharing your insight with the available technology. I too am surprised that more companies don’t leverage the software and equipment they already have (and paid for) to better their customer’s experience. You’d think that this would be an obvious measure of a return on their investment.