Every company today has one or more ways of providing customer service. However, a recent survey called the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer finds that only 37% of Americans felt companies have increased focus on providing quality customer service. So if you are a senior customer service executive and wondering why all that investment is not yielding results – think again! Read on to find out what I think could be the reasons. The link(s) in the PDF/Presentation(s) is(are) not working due to some changes in the website. Please refer to the new link(s) http://bit.ly/hfWj2s

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Is it Time to Re-evaluate How Effective Your Customer Service
Really Is?
By Jim Ziaja
I came across a recent survey called the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, which talks about how
companies must place increased emphasis on customer service. No marks for guessing that one. But here’s the
interesting part ─ according to the survey, American consumers spend 9 % more on companies that provide excellent
customer service. Sixty-one percent of Americans surveyed felt that the quality of customer service is absolutely essential
given today’s economic environment. But here’s the most important finding - only 37% of Americans felt companies have
increased focus on providing quality customer service. Now that’s something to sit up and take notice of, if you are a
customer service executive! So the bottom line according to the survey is that customers are telling companies that they
do a bad job of serving them.
And, this issue of customer service is not limited only to the U.S. Similar to their American counterparts, a majority of the
consumers in all other countries surveyed felt customer service is the most crucial area for companies in the current
economy. But they were equally concerned about the lack of focus on this key area.
Every company today has one or more ways of providing customer service. So if you are a senior customer service
executive and wondering why all that investment is not yielding results – think again! In my opinion, the reasons for failure
of customer service could be:
a. Not ‘listening’ to the customer: It’s very important for the agent handling the call to understand what the
customer needs and not just hearing them. This will depend on the quality of the call flow diagrams and on the
regular training provided to the agent. Feedback from internal quality monitoring and customer satisfaction
surveys needs to get to the agents in a timely manner, so that the feedback loop and improvement cycle can
work properly.
b. Too much emphasis on AHT: Every agent has a target Average Handle Time (AHT) at the contact center,
which is guided by the call flow diagram. If these are not reviewed periodically to ensure that customers ar e
getting enough time to express their concerns and the data is being captured accurately, then customers will
most likely leave dissatisfied. It is important to put AHT in the proper perspective, as just one of the many
measurements in a process. and not a measure of the true outcome you are trying to achieve when your
customers call.
c. Lack of innovative approaches in delivering customer service: Most contact centers do not invest in
innovative approaches for keeping customers happy. We believe the contrary. For instance, while managing lost
baggage for a leading airline client of ours, we realized how traumatized customers who were attending some
important event would be, to learn that their baggage was lost. So we began sorting information from the overall
lost baggage list to identify customers who needed to be informed at regular intervals about the status of their
baggage, and started sending proactive alerts to them. The fact that the airline was contacting them before they
could, raised the customer satisfaction levels to newer heights.
Even if you have got all the above right, unless you are able to resolve the pain point of the customer, your customer
service levels will always remain low! An article titled ‘Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers' by Harvard Business
Review, sums it up well by stating that you can create loyal customers primarily by reducing customer effort, i.e, b y helping
them solve their problems quickly and easily, and not by delighting them in service interactions with a robotic gr eeting or
thank-you!
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