{"id":5297,"date":"2023-03-22T20:15:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T20:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.replicant.com\/?p=5297"},"modified":"2023-05-09T21:08:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T21:08:45","slug":"the-national-customer-rage-survey-three-takeaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.replicant.com\/blog\/the-national-customer-rage-survey-three-takeaways\/","title":{"rendered":"The National Customer Rage Survey: 3 Takeaways"},"content":{"rendered":"
A recent <\/span>survey<\/span><\/a> found that Americans are not just increasingly dissatisfied with customer service, they\u2019re more aggressive than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n According to the report, 43% of customers yelled or raised their voice to express displeasure about their most serious problem, up from 35% in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n The blowback has been hard to miss. Customer service horror stories are often widely shared online, covered in the news, or experienced firsthand.<\/span><\/p>\n But the survey isn\u2019t merely an observation. It\u2019s a result. As many industries are still in recovery mode after being upended by the pandemic, customer service and hospitality at large are declining in the eyes of many Americans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For contact center leaders, the data shouldn\u2019t be taken as an indictment of their performance, but an opportunity to reassess their priorities around today\u2019s customer perceptions. Here are the biggest takeaways:<\/span><\/p>\n 74% of Americans reported having a product or service problem in the past year. The incidence of customer-reported problems has more than doubled since 1976. In the last few years, that trend has accelerated. Though the effects of product and service shortcomings are far from contact centers\u2019 fault, the impact hits them the hardest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Labor shortages outside of the contact center, for example, can cause a massive spike in airline call volumes when flights are canceled due to staffing issues. Similarly, supply chain delays can lead to thousands of order status checks and cancellations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat it\u2019s creating is even more of a rift, is what the data would suggest, between companies and their customers,\u201d said <\/span>Scott M. Broetzmann<\/span><\/a>, the President and CEO of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting. \u201cWhat we have here is a failure to communicate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When irregular scenarios happen, communication becomes even more important. As long as unpredictable service disruptions exist, contact centers must become more efficient at automating their most common, spike-prone call drivers. <\/span><\/p>\n This approach can include the rapid deployment of outbound messages, quickly customizing automated scripts, and reallocating agents to help customers understand how you\u2019re prioritizing their requests.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 43% of customers yelled or raised their voice to express displeasure, an 8% increase in aggressive customer behavior in just eight years. While this is an obvious red flag for brands, more importantly it\u2019s a problem for the agents that have to deal with the rage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At a time when hiring and retaining agents has never been more challenging, contact centers must place an emphasis on improving the agent experience. One strategy for accomplishing this is a focus on quality over quantity. <\/span><\/p>\n Agents want to help customers solve real problems. Enabling them to spend more time on nuanced issues and less on a high volume of repetitive questions is a great place to start.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe need to change the social contract and not think of these employees as \u2018low skill workers,\u2019\u201d said <\/span>Amas Tenumah<\/span><\/a>, author of Waiting for Service: An Insider’s Account of Why Customer Service is Broken and Tips to Avoid Bad Service. \u201cThese are complicated requests, because if they were easy, a bot or a machine could do it. And the quicker we evolve as an industry, the better off we will be,” he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That sentiment is well reflected by agents themselves. When contact centers deploy a cutting-edge AI platform like Contact Center Automation, employees don\u2019t fear for their jobs. After years of being given tools that encourage them to answer more calls faster, automation is a welcome solution for finally offloading their most mundane tasks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPoints of failure outside of the contact center increase demand<\/span><\/h2>\n
Agent well-being must be priority number one\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
Poor technology frustrates more than it optimizes<\/span><\/h2>\n