Category: customer care

customer care and related software rants

how high security leads to business loss?

this is back in 2008 – 2009, i started a account with religare trading account, i am not sure how they are performing now, below blog post is about my experience with them in above specified period.

they have this highly secured access method, if i remember correctly, to login i need to provide two passwords along with very ‘unique’ username, and i have to reset my password every two weeks, and whenever you change password you cannot reuse the same password used in any of that two passwords for last 3 times, also password should contain at least special character, caps alphabet and small letter and a number, i am not a creative person for passwords, and with this much restrictions, i nearly have to act like a password generator myself. With all these pain, i end up writing down my passwords. One fine day i gave the service once for all. I still get emails from religare once in a while to checkout all new improvised platform, i never feel confident with them…

It is good to impose tight security, but in the name of security dont impose something unrealistic, for a user your website is just another service he uses, his life is not dedicated for your service.

i wish these password mechanisms are simple for end users.

destructive power of IVR solutions and how we hope IVR’s are good?

When you are in business, probably mean you are serving customers, when your product or service sucks or not upto their expectations, either customer doesn’t understand how to use it, or customer need information about the product or service you sell, where do your customers turn to?
Customer care centers

Customer care is not the luxury you provide for the customers, but the excuse you buy from the customer, so it is our duty to ensure the the customer care is at it best for customers usability.

Ever heard this ‘ the ivr is bad ‘ ? Customers wouldn’t say that instead they say ‘…i am going to cancel their service, first thing…’ Customer would have called just for trivial problem that could have been fixed few minutes of discussion, but instead ivr put customer in bad spectrum and worse kill a business. I have already wrote a blog post on how implementing is nearly suicide for the business, i am not againt IVR, all i am trying to convey here is if the IVR is implemented wrongly that will result is loosing business.

IVR’s came into picture as a way to keep the customers entertained when all agents are busy, later it has become a medium to avoid customer and agent interaction in a hope IVR is taking care of every possible information customer requires.

Is it like people hate IVR(automation)? is IVR solutions are potential land mine for business to step on? I wouldn’t say that, its just bad technologies costing business, think of ATM for example, which is a classic example of self service success, that’s equivalent to what IVR does, the IVR’s should be planned thoroughly and implemented, where IVR is easy enough to understand even for a second grader kid.

ATM machines are the one giving me hope, there will be a day where customers accept IVR as defacto to interact with the business and still feel they are listened and cared.

email customer care do’s and dont’s | email contact center best practices

I happen to read this beautiful testimonial about zappos, from the blog post in quicksprout, testimonial goes like this:

In May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is.

Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances – lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also. When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So…IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS. With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.

How touching is that? Here is my recent experience with other company:

I have airtel broadband internet connection, month ago it stopped working, before i go into any further details let me tell you, airtel broadband IVR is the one of the worst planned IVR i have ever used in recent time, they never let you reach customer care(?!) agent unless you are zen like patience and smart enough to understand details between prompts, every time i call this number i only end up with additional high blood pressure apart from bad service i receive, so i always prefer sending emails which is least evil, at least you will send your problem details and wait for it to be resolved(lol), back to our story, with my internet connection not working

Step#1: i will be sending email to airtel customer care email id
Step#2: after acknowledgement email, someone will reply saying ‘we understand your problem, we are very sorry’ please find the reference number for your complain, it will be resolved within so and so date.
Step#3: someone from their end will call and ask about the problem, sometimes they visit you, sometimes not.
Step#4: after some minutes you will receive text stating, we are delighted to inform you, the problem has been rectified.
Step#5: go home and realize problem is not really rectified
Step#6: compose a reply for the Step#2 email, stating problem is not really solved, everything starts from Step#2 again, that is new reference number will be opened as new complaint, and those who closed that complain earlier without really solving doesn’t get questioned(i guess), this is a loop goes on, after nearly 40+ days my internet is still not working, i have data card now.

Do you see the difference in customer service? Former is more like making love, second is like wild drunk sex with sex doll, let me explain:

Zappos really “LISTENED” when customer spoke to it, went one step ahead and provided assistance and took part in customer’s grieve.

Other hand Airtel never read the reply fully, whenever there is a complain some machine (i find it difficult to call them customer care agents) sitting in the airtel office would generate a complain number and reply back, which will have predefined canned messages between like ‘we understand your problem’, ‘we are very sorry’, ‘thank you’ i am really against the concept of canned responses to say sorry when you really don’t mean it, provide fake auto generated promise like ‘we will resolve this problem by XX date and YY hrs…’ That doesn’t sound human at all.

Solutions:
1. If you really have to use auto generated canned messages, for god sake use thesaurus and generate as much relavent canned messages as possible, at least customer feel it has canned message in first 3 or 4 email exchange itself.

2. Never say sorry, you understand the problem when you really don’t

3. Never provide auto generated meaningless dates/time and never keep promise

4. read – read – read the replies

5. When your representative says the problem is solved, have a follow-up with customer to ensure if the problem is really solved (seriously you never thought about it?)

6. You customers are okay if your customer care agent replies with ‘yo man..’, ‘sorry dude..’, ‘i told my engineer abt your prob..’ etc, customer just need solution not your pure black and while professional email format without any solution at all.

installing IVR for companies – aka my company committing suicide

Hi all this is a follow-up post written at ivrsworld.com in support of IVR, there is a famous sayins in tamil ‘too much anything is bad’, keeping that in mind let us proceed discussing the good and bad of ivr solutions for business and the end users.

Why does a business exist?
Business exist because it has a customer to serve.

Why do business support customers?
To keep the customers they need to support the customers, for whatever business they don’t with the company.

Why ivr?
To keep providing and doing mundane and repitative tasks.

How ivr is actually used, especially by mobile phone operators?
To put customer on loops, that they avoid interacting with the agents at any cause. Which will result in not just unhappy customers but a angry customer, even if the customer called for a trivial information and put to deal with the ivr which is poorly developed will result in a angry customers.

IVR should come in as a last option, if business really want to retain the customers, and the ivr they use should be very detailed and optimized enough, if possible expose the ivr flow maps through the company websites, ivr can be triggered during off peak hours say night hours where agents are not available to take calls and customers won’t be calling much, also when there is too much calls in queue etc, that is the ivr should be blunt enough to provide information like there is already plenty of call, expected wait time is so and so, they can either decide to wait in queue of drop the call and request for a call back.

When ivr is implemented, business should be clear about – why a customer would call them, and categorize it.

1. New customer
2. Existing customers

For existing customers:
1. Is it regarding a problem
2. Is it regarding some information
3. Leaving feedback

Depending on the business interest, ivr should be designed around above said category, and how much time customer should be allowed to deal the ivr machine, eg: if the call is regarding information that can be provided through ivr to customer. If the call is regarding problem customer shouldn’t be put to deal ivr for longer duration it will only annoy and end up angry customer.

As a conclusion, ivr should be used very sparingly only to do mundane and repitative information providing work, no customer would like to deal with a machine for their problems, i am yet to come across a single customer who says ‘ boy i wish this information is provided by a ivr machine’.