12 Days of Xmas #4: My contact centre manager said to me: We have to simplify our contact channels

On the 4th day of Christmas my contact centre manager said to me, “We have to simplify our contact channels”

Many marketers complain about the unresponsiveness of customers, but have they thought about just how hard it is to make contact with your organisation? Channels, media, intermediaries and aggregators have proliferated, making it harder to listen and respond even for B2B companies.

I was once asked to review the situation regarding national helplines for a particular service. We uncovered:

  • 27 different national telephone helplines published across all media; 3 of which were dead; 1 transferred to another!
  • Lots of general propositions; some errors and unclear messages
  • Multiple choices of where to seek assistance
  • Variety of call costs & differing opening hours
  • High cost-to-customer as well as high cost-to-serve
  • No strategic overview of the MI or interaction quality

This had a massive detrimental impact on the customer experience:

  • High customer effort
  • Customer journey dead-ends & customers giving up
  • Risk of customers receiving differing (possibly conflicting) advice; or no answer to their question!

Maybe you should treat your company – and your customers – to an outside-in review of channel and media listening and contactability.

We can help, email us at: hello@customerattuned.com

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Peter Lavers