If you think your company does not need a phone number for people to reach you; if you think all your customer service department requires for assisting your customers are online means, or that you don’t need real, live people to help customers with their questions or complaints, we have one thing to say to you: You are mistaken!
It may sound strange to be so passionate about this, but believe us – we are speaking from experience. A very recent, frustrating, bang your head on a wall experience.
We won’t bore you with the details, but it involves online instructions being sent to an email address we barely use these days; one for which we needed to log in, but have forgotten the password. Every single attempt we made to recover the password online or to obtain online assistance from this particular email server’s help page failed, oftentimes sending us in circles, or just plain hitting dead ends.
We decided since we weren’t able to get the help we needed online, we would call someone at the email provider headquarters. Only, we couldn’t find a phone number on the website. Anywhere. No customer service hotline and the only thing the “Contact Us” link did was take us right back to the inept “help” page. There’s even a very nice message telling us that if we can’t recover our password online, there was nothing else to do and we’ll have to set up a new account. Gee, thanks.
And apparently it wasn’t just us having this issue. When we did a Google search to see if anyone could provide us with a customer service number, we learned from numerous people this particular company simply does not have one. It’s not that it’s hidden; it plain doesn’t exist. And if we did find a purported number to call, we just got a recording telling us to go to the online “help” page. And those who tried to get help via social media channels like Twitter were given the same response.
Do you see the problem here?
Technology to Turn Poor Customer Experiences into Good Customer Experiences
Without having a way to call the company and speak with an actual person to try to figure out and resolve the issue, many people are unable to access their email accounts. Now, we’re lucky – the information we need our password for is not imperative. But what if there was vital information someone needed for their job, or for a family member’s well-being in their email account? What then? How does it help anyone when a company’s customer support is basically summed up as “Can’t find a solution online? Well, that’s a shame. Good luck!”?
It should come as no surprise this particular company’s reputation has taken quite a hit for its deplorable customer service. In fact, if and when we do manage to access our account again, rest assured we will be switching everything to another server. This entire occurrence has made us feel completely unvalued as a customer, and that the company does not care at all about our experience.
Good Customer Experience Programs with Speech Analysis Technology
The bottom line is that every business NEEDS to have a phone number people can call for assistance, since not all problems can be solved online. Someone may have a problem that needs special attention, and they need to actually speak with a real, live person about it. And it’s not just for the customer’s benefit. Phone conversations that occur in contact centers can actually contain a wealth of information that may otherwise go unheeded. Clearly many people are having the same problem with that particular email server, but if they can’t communicate this problem effectively, how can anything be done about it? But if the company had a phone number to call, along with valuable tools such as speech analytics to quickly scan and identify common issues, the problems could be easily resolved in the present, and avoided in the future.
So take it from those who know: Do not dismiss having a phone number for your company. Your customers want to be heard and they want to be helped. Don’t let them down!
Want to know more about using technology in your contact center to deliver good customer experiences? Speak with one of our experts today and see how easily cloud-based speech analytics can be added to your contact center, without any IT ramifications, and start improving the experiences that your customers have with your business. Call 1-800-639-1700.
