Companies that opt for cheap automated solutions to customer inquiries and complaints, rather than providing excellent customer service, may regret it later, Amir Barnea writes.
Are you finding it harder to reach a real human when you need help? So am I.
Increasingly, when you try to contact a company to solve a problem with their product or service, you run into bots powered by artificial intelligence, online chats and FAQs. If you do find a phone number, you become snarled in endless automated voice menus that keep directing you to the firm’s website.
×
Already a Subscriber? Sign in You are logged in Switch accounts
Often, it’s almost impossible to speak to an actual person who will listen and help resolve the issue you’ve run into.
I experienced this frustration recently, when my wife and I did a five-day juice cleansing as part of our “spring-cleaning” activities.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Always supporters of local businesses, we decided to purchase the cold-pressed juice from Loop Mission, a Montreal-based juice company that uses “perfectly good fruits and veggies that would have been thrown out simply for esthetic reasons” — a motto we highly appreciate.
After carefully selecting different colourful juice combinations, I placed my largest-yet online juice order on Loop’s website. Seconds after completing the payment, I got the following message: “Our team is preparing your order. We usually send out each box between five to 10 business days.”
Normally, this would have been fine, but for us it was too late since we were scheduled to go on vacation in a week’s time.
I therefore decided to cancel the order immediately and get the juice at the local supermarket. Since it was such a large order (dozens of bottles), I had to cancel it ASAP, so I wouldn’t get stuck with an endless supply of juice.
I searched for a phone number on Loop’s website but there was none listed. The only way to communicate with Loop was by filling out an online request form. I did that, and the automatic response said someone would get back to me within 48 business hours.
Wanting to be extra cautious, I emailed again within the 48 business hours, highlighting “urgent” in the title. I assumed that someone would treat it urgently, and that it was safe to get the juice elsewhere.
But days passed, and I didn’t hear back, and the frustration of not being able to pick up the phone and call the company grew.
Eventually, almost five business days after I tried to cancel my order, I got an email saying the order had already been processed. Of course, I already knew that — the large shipment had arrived two days before the email.
Weeks later, I still have a few juice bottles left in my fridge.
I reached out to David Côté, Loop’s co-founder, to get the company’s side of the story, and have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.
Côté immediately replied to my email, apologized for the “unacceptable customer service” I described, and proposed that we chat.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Côté admitted that “not having a phone number listed is unreasonable” and promised that he would personally take care of that. During the next three weeks, calls would be forwarded to his own private cell number, he said, as the company continued its search to fill a customer service position.
But beyond the impressive “first-aid” response, Côté addressed what seems to be a deeper problem when it comes to customer experience.
“The people that were very good at providing customer service are retiring. And younger people, who studied marketing, and once used to have these jobs as entry jobs, don’t want to do customer service,” Côté said.
“They ask, ‘Why are we doing this?’ There are robots doing this; there’s AI doing this,” he added, and then summarized the difficult truth in one sentence: “Talking to someone is a discomfort to them.”
Ultimately, what we’re experiencing is advanced technology that is offering cheap and efficient (but not necessarily satisfying) tools to deal with customers, coupled with a younger workforce that’s part of a generation that experiences discomfort or even anxiety from direct human interaction on the phone.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
It is therefore not surprising that a recent customer experience report, published by KPMG, shows a consistent decline in customer experience over the past five years, with the steepest decline happening between 2022 and 2023.
Firms are blinded by the lure and ease of automated solutions and struggle to hire for traditional customer service positions. Yet those who don’t forget that the core principles of excellent customer service cannot be achieved without that special human touch will be rewarded.
