A mystery shopper exercise was conducted in February 2007, contacting 50 of the UK’s top internet service providers (ISPs) posing as UK-based internet users. Very simple questions were asked, about pricing plans and products offered. The company sent emails, and also telephoned the ISPs’ customer service departments, as well as checking their websites.
A key finding of the survey was that more than half of email enquiries were not answered within a day (and worryingly, if they weren’t answered quickly, they would probably never be answered). Most telephone queries were responded to quickly but lacked personalization.
One interesting point that the survey picked up was that, despite the prevalence of instant messaging software among the end-user audience, only 16% of the ISPs surveyed actually provided an online chat capability. Of course, given that a lack of availability is likely to be one of the main problems that customers will want to contact their ISPs about, this may not be so important, but where additional information is required, it could be a valuable way of supporting customers. As customers become more sophisticated, their expectations of customer service rise as well.
Self-help tools were conspicuous by their absence – yet, as people become more internet-savvy, they become more willing to try to solve their own problems themselves. However, only if this is easy to do – the way that Google rapidly became the most popular search engine was because searching became easy; organizations need to be able to offer comparably simple tools to solve problems or find out information.
One of the issues appears to be that customer service is still not seen as a major differentiator – perhaps because of the historically high cost of providing it. Yet if customers and potential customers can get accurate and timely information about product and service offerings, they can then make informed decisions and may well buy additional products or services.
The tools and technologies to support customer service are out there, and improving all the time. One problem may be that many organizations bought earlier versions that did not deliver on their promise, but it is more likely that the organization itself did not focus on how it needed to change in order to really deliver customer service. It is vital to put yourself in your customers’ shoes from time to time, and see what your own organization’s service is like – or take note from exercises such as the one Talisma conducted.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
