Last week I had a problem with a Network Solutions account, an account I have had for almost ten years with no issue.
I don’t call customer support lines much these days. Comcast’s third rung of hell support essentially amounts to an application of what Pavlov learned with the dogs I avoid those calls as much as I can.
So I get on the phone while I am driving in to work last week, and after being on hold for 20 minutes, the very friendly gentleman on the line says – “I would be happy to help with you – I can solve this problem for you today” – at which point I felt pretty good. Then about 30 seconds later he said he needed to transfer me to someone else, which he did, and this time I sat on hold for 25 minutes (I have a long drive to work). Once that person got on the line he said it wasn’t a Network Solutions problem and I needed to call Google Mail.
My Web Master Dawud Miracle (I recommend him) helped me figure out the issue later, so all is well on that front – but it struck me that every time I have a terrible customer service experience, it seems really, really simple to solve this issue.
I have learned, most recently in my work with Disney, that one of five things is most important to a customer at any one time (stay tuned for the blog about all five – later this week). In the case of a call center issue, it’s even simpler than that – it’s one of just two things, and those are:
1) How urgent it is to solve the problem
2) How much the customer values their time
Therefore, the simple solution to this issue that will result in the creation of a new profit center for the likes of Comcast and Network Solutions, is to give the customer one of three choices:
1) Have them call you back as soon as a call center agent can deal with it. Not urgent, and they value their time, this adds no cost to the call center operation and it gets issues resolved.
2) Wait on the line until the person gets the help they need. Urgent, but time is not the biggest concern of the customer.
3) Allow the customer to pay an amount for immediate service. Urgent and the customer values their time (could also be extremely urgent in this case). Here you hire a new group of paid call center people (so as not to dilute the already backlogged group) and staff it based on revenue/profit targets. There would have to be some experimentation on pricing, but that’s some pretty simple A/B testing to get to that
This is a clear path to much happier customers, with better revenue.
Stay tuned for the blog later this week with all five customer priorities, including references to PushSpring, Jack-in-the-Box, Nordstrom, Disney, and more. The key is looking at the really basic vectors of what’s most important to customers and what’s brand aligned. Not a new idea, just a lot of new data science that’s leading to rapidly changing customer expectation vector / telemetry opportunities.
-Ric
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