Customers remember how long it took

In this last article of the series I want to deal with the belief I think sits underneath all the others. It is the belief that a company’s relationship with its customers lives in its customer service, and that the relationship will suffer if an employee no longer answers the phone.

I understand where it comes from. Banks have closed most of their branches. Nobody visits the office of their energy company, their insurer or their telecoms provider, and most of us never meet anyone who works there. For a great many large companies, the call about the invoice has become the last place a customer talks to someone from the company. When an organisation looks at that, I can see why it would want to protect it. It feels like the last thread between the company and the people it serves.

I think the last thread is carrying too much weight

The fear is that if AI answers, the company will have lost its last personal contact with its customers. I think that fear leads to the wrong conclusion.

If every customer has to wait in a queue so that the company can keep that last personal contact, the relationship is being paid for with the customer’s time. The company protects its moment of contact, and the customer pays for it in lunch breaks, in hold music and in evenings spent waiting for a line that opens at eight. I do not believe a customer relationship is built that way.

A queue says something about the company too

Every part of the service tells the customer something. A friendly employee on the phone tells them the company employs friendly people. A 20-minute wait before that employee answers tells them how much their time is worth to the company. I think customers hear both messages, and I think the second one is louder, because they spent 20 minutes listening to it.

The same goes for the email that is answered in three working days, the opening hours that end before most people finish work and the second employee who asks for the account number the customer already gave the first. None of those were chosen to send a message. They send one all the same.

What the wait tells the customer

What the customer hears with oHallo

The waitOpening hours that end at four say the service runs on the company’s schedule.

With oHalloA move registered at 21:40 on a Sunday says the company is there when the customer is.

The waitTwenty minutes on hold says the staffing plan matters more than the customer’s time.

With oHalloA request taken up the moment it arrives says the customer’s time counts.

The waitA reply after three working days says the request joined a backlog.

With oHalloAn email answered the evening it was sent says the request mattered.

The waitA second request for the account number says nobody kept the first call.

With oHalloA matter explained once says the company remembers the customer.

What I think customers remember

Ask people about a company whose service they value, and I think they will tell you how easy it was. The address was changed at twenty to ten on a Sunday evening, in the same call in which they asked for it. The answer on the phone was the same as the answer in the email. They did not have to explain the matter twice. When something was genuinely difficult, an employee took it on without a long wait and already knew the whole story.

That is the service we build oHallo to give. oHallo picks up the moment the customer calls and answers written requests at any hour, in the customer’s own language, and it completes the task in the organisation’s own systems while the customer waits. The organisation’s operating procedures apply to every request on every channel, so the customer gets the same answer however they ask. When a person is needed, the employee gets the whole history.

The company can call its customers first

There is one more thing I think organisations that worry about losing touch with their customers should consider. A company whose employees no longer spend the day on the queue can call its customers first. An employee can ring a customer before the customer has to ring about something, for example when a bill is about to be much higher than usual.

For a company afraid of losing its last personal contact with its customers, I think that is the better answer. Its employees can talk to customers more often, at the moments that matter to them, without asking any of them to wait.

A relationship is built by respect for the customer’s time

I have spent this series arguing with a view I think is sincere, and in many ways kind. The organisations that hold it care about their customers and are proud of their teams, and they should be. I simply think they have drawn the wrong conclusion from the right instinct.

Customers remember how long it took. The companies that will be trusted in the years ahead are, in my view, the ones that stop asking their customers to wait for the privilege of speaking to them, and keep their employees for the moments when a person makes the difference.