Companies increasingly invest in the expansive troubleshooting guides and bots to substitute the physical employees. However, this creates an illusion that physical contact is redundant, as everything is available online. From the company side, human service means paying rent for the stores and salaries of shop assistants and call center employees, as well as hiring and training costs [1]. To save these costs, big firms such as Amazon limit the means of communication for non-users. But what if the online guide does not help you? How do you call Google if the search engine misinterprets your search words? How do you e-mail Facebook if your account doesn’t work?
According to the authors of “The Effortless Experience”, more than 2 out of 3 people are ready to switch to a competitor after just one unpleasant service experience [2]. One thing that consumers value the most appears to be effortless service experience. Users want to be able to choose the communication median best suiting their preferences and needs, be it live, via call, email or social media, online and in-store. One of the strongest factors of customer loyalty is how well the customer can be served without any effort from their side [2]. Therefore, limiting human interaction, which is much more flexible than the bots, can have dare consequences.
But what is the preferred way of communication? Accenture 83% of the people surveyed prefer real-life communication to automated service, as it feels more personalized. Around half the sample gave more credibility to the new goods bought in-store rather than online [3]. But physical experience is not always better: process automation allows faster and quicker service for standard operation, the internet ensures that the service is available everywhere and thus, better customer experience. I myself sincerely detest calling the companies. It is frustrating to keep repeating my name, date of birth, email and home address for identification purposes. But if other communication channels fail or are unavailable, I more often than not end up with that being the only option. How should the companies balance the costs with the customer experience? And is there one best solution?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/why-you-cant-get-in-touch-with-big-companies-2012-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T
[2] https://www.glia.com/digital-customer-service-defined
[3] https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/us-companies-losing-customers-as-consumers-demand-more-human-interaction-accenture-strategy-study-finds.htm
Thank you for this interesting blog post and bringing this issue to light, which I am sure a lot of us have dealt with! I personally feel that the tradeoffs between physical (human) and digital customer service communication methods are often weighed against the type of customer and service being offered. I personally find communication with an actual customer service assistant helpful when browsing a service-orientated website, like a provider of CRM software, and I would like to know more about the implementation process or previous success stories. A human assistant can thus offer a more personalized experience, when asked questions regarding the specific, tacit, aspects of the product, which an automated assistant will have trouble understanding. On the other hand, when browsing an e-commerce website like Amazon, questions regarding the website functionality or the purchasing process may be more easily and efficiently answered through an automated service assistant. It would be interesting to know how my personal preferences compare with the actual decision process used by firms regarding what type of service communication methods to use!
Nice, refreshing topic! The subject is a funny contrast to the subject of information strategy. Within this profession we mainly learn to make everything more digital and with more use of data analytics.
I just would have liked to see more supporting counter arguments, because I am curious about the discussion within this topic.
Very rightly said! Even I find it very frustrating to call and be transferred from line to line and then if that line doesn’t have the option I am looking for, the system send me back to the initial stage! Personally to avoid it I often just directly go to the option where they directly connect the a person (usually number 9 on call) but looking at this tactic from company’s side, it is definitely not efficient for them. During a marketing class, my group had to analyse the trend of convenience in the digital age and we had concluded that however digital-automated processes are more cost effective, companies still need to maintain a dual path of offline personal communication and digital method, the degree of both will depend on the characteristics of your target group. For example, for grocery stores there is no way Aldi/AH can completely move their operations online because a huge part of their target market is the older generation which likes to go shopping on weekly basis and pick out things themselves. So for them they have to maintain stores but they also need to have an online portal for the fast moving people like ourselves.
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