An Unsolicited Call Yields Real-World Customer Experience Lessons

I am privileged to work for a company that plays a central role in providing technology to assist other companies in improving Customer Experience (CX). Now that I am "on the inside" of this industry, I view my own experiences as a consumer in a totally different light. I'd like to share a story and lessons learned from a particularly "fun" call I had this morning with a car dealership. Stick with me! Low hanging fruit often exists to make customer experience significantly better! The best way to identify this fruit is to go through the journey from customer's point of view.

So ... I am at my desk this morning getting ready to attack a large pile of work and email, hoping to make meaningful progress. The phone rings and I pick up to an IVR system telling me that my "(muffled sound, maybe car?) warranty is expiring and would I like to talk to someone about extending it?"

LESSON 1: If you are going to leverage the automation and scaling power of IVR systems, make your audio quality and messaging clear ! If you don't, you are going to immediately trigger confusion, frustration, and potentially churn with the customers you are trying to reach. Measure, test, and monitor continuously!

Now, if I were not professionally involved in this Cx industry always looking for more data points, I would have hung up. But I was curious how a human agent would handle this, so I hit "0" and went to the next level. A friendly-sounding human picked up the phone and immediately launched into asking me for information. Make/model of car, name, etc etc. I carefully stopped her and asked a simple question: "what is this call about"? She could not answer that until I gave her more information.

LESSON 2: Coach your agents well! Study call transcripts (shameless plug for Voci) and especially look at calls that start off poorly. It is vital to get started on the right foot to create positive vibe and a sense of trust. Selling your product or services will be ridiculously easier once this is accomplished.

I proceeded to explain to this increasingly flustered agent that I needed clarity on what we are talking about(seems like a reasonable question...). At this point in the call I'm actually having fun, but alas she is clearly not. I explained that the IVR message was a tad bit unclear and confusing, yet she is still not communicating to me the big picture. She then said that she will be transferring me to her "coverage senior agent". OK! Now we are getting somewhere! I made it to the famous second level. I am put on hold, and about 10 seconds later a "coverage senior agent" picks up. However, instead of asking me what I need help with, she also launches into a confusing sales pitch for my (BRAND WITHHELD, regretfully) car.

LESSON 3: Show empathy. Do not assume the reason for the call. Show respect to the customer and ask for their input upfront! It will 1) save time, and 2) build rapport. Again - inspecting transcripts that demonstrate this valuable behavior by agents can uncover good and bad examples of this to teach or correct. Impact on churn and sales will be significant!

So again I jumped in and said "Hold on, I don't want to hear about my options just yet, but I want to talk about ..." Click. And that is as far as I got. She hung up.

LESSON 4: Don't hang up on your customer. (File under: Duh.)

So - this particular car company, dealership, and brand are pretty tainted for me. I could conclude that this was the poor work of just a few people, but actually they are operating within a broader system that was built with rules, behavior, and a defined process. So this cannot be blamed on a few "bad actors", but instead on a lot of "bad architects". The tragedy here is that the changes that could be made are super easy and would have very large impacts to metrics associated with new sales, customer retention, and brand experience.

Overall, it was an incredibly valuable experiment for me and really put some of these concepts into a clear light that I can now use as a story to my prospects that are asking "what does Voci do for me?" Maybe I should call this company back and thank them before I not-renew my overpriced warranty...