eGain is touting a report from Forrester Consulting and my friend Ian Jacobs purporting to show that omnichannel customer service is stagnant or worse when it comes to delivering service that customers need and want.
Ian does good work and I am in agreement with him on this, but I have trouble with some conclusions, specifically the implication that the problem can be solved with more software.
Now, I am a proud software bigot, but I am also fond of the saying, “If you take your car to Midas, you’re going to get a muffler.” Yes, I know this is an exaggeration, but that’s where the humor comes from. It says that there is a danger in thinking you’re being objective when you aren’t and when you are in fact prejudging a situation.
Unhappy Customers
In this case, the prejudging comes in two flavors. First, it assumes that technology users have identified the important moments of truth that drive customers to seek service in the first place. Nothing could be further from the truth. Customers everywhere are unhappy with service.
Sixty-four percent of customers switched their business to another provider because of poor service last year, up 26 percent over 2010, according to Accenture’s Global Consumer Pulse Research study, cited by eGain. Importantly, this created a $6.2 trillion switching economy.
How serious is that? There are exactly three areas or countries on the planet with GDP in excess of $6 trillion: the EU, the United States and China. Importantly, the switching economy provides no value; when a switch is complete, you have a status quo situation. So think of that money as simply evaporated.
Second, it presumes that better alignment of disparate digital channels is what’s needed for the fix.
Now, I am a fan of eGain and I think it offers some good omnichannel support, but it’s clear to me that the channel — that is, the delivery mechanism for service — is not the problem. If you take Accenture’s numbers seriously, you realize that the problem exists across key markets around the world. Technology is not solving this problem. But it could.
Tone-Deaf Vendors
The missing ingredient, based on my research, is understanding customer moments of truth. My research into customer sentiment shows that customers get most upset and do indeed churn when a vendor’s service processes fall apart. Repeatedly.
Some of this can be blamed on poor or old software systems that simply break, but a very large proportion of customer complaints go deeper.
Simply put, many vendors are just missing important customer moments of truth, times when customers expect their vendors to come through with an appropriate recognition of a problem and a solution. Too often the vendors are not even aware of the problem.
If I could reduce my learnings to one idea, it would be this: Customers strenuously object when vendors act tone deaf. Wouldn’t you?
Keep Solutions at Hand
In my view, a solution has two parts. First, it is certainly good to be able to jump into a channel with a customer — any channel — to provide service. The idea of responding in whatever channel a customer uses to initiate contact makes all the sense in the world.
Once you’re there, you have to perform, so the second part is for vendors to capture and understand customer moments of truth based on their product lines and customer demographics.
Vendors have to be locked and loaded with solutions to known or high-probability problems. For less obvious problems, they have to provide a sure and streamlined path to a person who can help them, regardless of channel. Journey mapping is an important part of this too.
I am fond of quoting a short article from Harvard Business Review titled “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers,” by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman and Nicholas Toman.
Their thesis, which I agree with, is that customers want competent and efficient solutions to their problems so they can get on with their lives. This sounds like being in moments of truth to me. They don’t need to be delighted, and the quest for delight is a rabbit hole down which we pour too many resources with poor results.
Proactive Service
If you want competent and efficient solutions, it helps to plan in advance and perhaps offer ready-made solutions (aka best practices), to the extent possible, that can be pushed or pulled through multiple channels rather than relying on outdated hunt-and-peck self-service.
To get to that point, you need to ask your customers about their needs. You can do this passively through machine learning systems or actively through communities. Either way, we need to become more proactive about service.
We can leverage the powerful omnichannel technologies now on offer, but first we need to catch up by devising better ways to service. Otherwise, we’re just applying new technology to old processes and expecting different results. No one’s ever done that, right?
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