Sometimes the customer service teams who are supposed to be solving problems somehow manage to make them so much worse instead. Show
These are their stories — along with some tips to help you avoid ending up on this list next time we update it! 1. Running from responsibilityThe root of many terrible customer experiences is a company that is happy to collect money from a transaction but not to accept responsibility when things go wrong. Amazon refuses to refund an outrageous delivery chargeIn the case of the $7,000 toilet paper, Amazon relied on being technically correct (in that a third-party seller had levied the enormous delivery charge) to avoid any responsibility until their hand was forced by bad press. This is one situation in which the company should have definitely folded. Get responsible:
2. Reluctance to respondSlow response times are one of the most common causes of low customer satisfaction rates, and the passing of time can turn even the smallest problem into a major issue (or so my dentist insists on telling me). Final call for boringOne man was on hold for 15 hours with Australian airline QANTAS. Painfully, that’s 20 minutes longer than the flight from Adelaide to NYC he was calling about. QANTAS denies it happened, but anyone who has dealt with automated phone systems is prone to believe the customer. Speed up your service:
3. Failures of flexibilitySticking rigidly to policies, even when they make no sense in a given context, is a classic customer service failure that is especially common when dealing with larger companies. The microwave with the maxi problemsA microwave requiring five repairs in six months was apparently not broken enough for Whirlpool to just replace it. They dragged the process out until (again) being publicly shamed into action. Get to full stretch:
4. Deceptive designsSome of the worst customer experiences happen before the customer service team is ever involved. Product designers and managers, looking for ways to growth-hack their way to meeting KPIs, can be tempted to trick customers into doing things they might not voluntarily do. LinkedIn’s dark designProfessional network LinkedIn has famously pushed the boundaries of dark design patterns. Dan Schlosser catalogued them a few years back. One such design resulted in thousands of people being bombarded with “Join LinkedIn” emails seemingly sent by their friends. Stay on the light side:
5. Hiding humansWhen you’re looking for help and a competent, caring person arrives, it is an incredible experience. Of course, the reality is often more like chasing Ron Swanson’s swivel chair. Making it hard to talk to a person is so common that services like GetHuman exist to help people find human assistance. Hide and seekThis frustrated Telstra customer’s plea for help really makes the point. Apparently, being a Level 8 Inspector is not enough to warrant a phone call with a real person. Bad news for Inspector Gadget. Be in touch:
Try the customer support platform your team and customers will loveTeams using Help Scout are set up in minutes, twice as productive, and save up to 80% in annual support costs. Start a free trial to see what it can do for you. Try for free6. Bamboozled botsIf not being able to talk to a human is frustrating, then talking to a wonky simulation of a human can be even worse. From unhelpful to outright incomprehensible, bad bots beget bothered buyers. The chat bot that chats notIn writing our article on AI chatbots in customer service, we tried a bunch of live bots. The most frustrating ones were not those that failed completely, because that is at least fun to watch. It was the bots that seemed to offer help but failed to deliver it, like this Flowxo example: Be the best bot you can be:
7. Forcing phone callsThis is the opposite of the earlier “hiding humans” category of poor service. Requiring customers to make a phone call to cancel or modify their account, when everything else can be done online, is infuriating. How Bare you?Tarek Khalil took to Twitter to document his quest to cancel his Baremetrics account. The company provided some reasons that it was “necessary” to work this way, but it sure is odd that signing up is always so much easier than leaving. Meanwhile in Australia, satirists at The Chaser currently offer to do the tedious work of cancelling a subscription to Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers on your behalf. Now that’s good service! Avoid phoning it in:
8. Disrespectful discourseBeing in customer service can involve accepting a lot of unpleasant behavior from upset customers and still responding kindly. However, sometimes it is the customer service agent who is bringing down the tone. A customer by any other nameComcast was forced to apologize after a team member changed a customer’s account name from Ricardo Brown to “A**Hole Brown.” (Although that’s likely the fastest Comcast has ever updated a customer’s details.) Rudeness reduction:
9. Lazy listeningA special kind of service failure involves receiving customer instructions and doing exactly what was asked but without applying any independent thought or consideration of intent. This is another form of “technically correct” (the best kind of correct). Well, that takes the cakeReview this astounding collection of cake decorations where the decorator seems to have taken things a touch too literally. Recipe for better reading:
10. Careless of contextWhen you are in a phone queue because the company’s website is broken but you still need help, it’s especially infuriating to be told “Try using our website!” every 30 seconds by a recorded voice. Context matters, and what might normally be a perfectly reasonable response can suddenly be awful if the situation has changed. Bot of AmericaIn what was initially presented as friendly, human social media service, but later revealed to be another bamboozled bot, Bank of America repeatedly sent generic “helpful” Twitter replies to an artist protesting the bank’s behavior. This one was a robot, but there are plenty of real humans who aren’t able to break from the script even when the play suddenly has a new act. Pay attention to your surroundings:
11. Declining to de-escalateEverybody makes mistakes, is misunderstood, or disappoints someone sometimes. When things go wrong, though, it’s best not to dig in and make it much worse. Motel madnessAn Australian motel received an online review they disagreed with, and rather than working with the customer to understand and address it, they decided to charge them an extra $50 instead. Inevitably, this resulted in media attention and an eventual refund, with far greater damage to the business than the original review. Dig up:
Most bad service is unspectacularIf you’re reading this article, you’re probably not delivering customer service so bad that it is featured on the local news. Reading about the failures of others can be reassuring and even satisfying. However, it doesn’t take a huge error to lose business. Small service irritations, left to fester, will drive away many otherwise happy customers. Pay attention to all those small signals that tell you when things are not quite right. Watch your customer satisfaction rates, your response times, and your social mentions. It’s much cheaper and more effective to make small course corrections before they turn into major problems. If you’re just starting out with your customer service team, or if it has been a while since you stepped away from the queue to see the big picture, consider taking our free Foundations of Great Service course. You’ll set yourself and your team up to deliver the sort of consistently high-quality service that shows up on your company’s balance sheet, instead of on Twitter’s trending page. Like what you see? Share with a friend. Mathew PattersonAfter running a support team for years, Mat joined the marketing team at Help Scout, where we make excellent customer service achievable for companies of all sizes. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn. What is the outcome of supportive communication?Supportive communication can reduce emotional distress, enhance coping, protect health and improve personal relationships [27] . ...
What is the outcome of supportive communication quizlet?Supportive communication seeks to preserve or enhance a positive relationship while addressing a problem, giving negative feedback, or tackling a difficult issue.
What does reframing as a reactive strategy for managing stress involve?Reframing challenges the negative thoughts and beliefs that contribute to distress. By learning to recognize distorted thinking and then actively working to change these thoughts to be more positive and realistic, people can feel more resilient and optimistic in the face of stress.
When part of the message is not understood which probe is best?What are the four types of probing responses? Clarification probe -used when message is not clear or ambiguos.
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