Easing the Customer Experience
As a consultant, I help make websites and other products better for customers, and better for business. As a consumer, I sometimes fall prey to the same bad customer experiences as everyone else, and it causes me to reflect on what we can do in our work lives to improve customer experiences, whether for members, customers, clients, or colleagues.
The Set Up
As a longtime mobile phone and Internet plan holder with a company we’ll call “Schmerizon,” I had been eligible for a discounted ‘bundled’ plan for years, but had never been able to apply the discount because I couldn’t log in to the online account associated with my home Internet account. So, I contacted Schmerizon for help. It did not go well.
Schmerizon, like many companies, has expanded its product lines over the years. Companies that expand organically or through mergers and acquisitions may end up with multiple backend systems, multiple online accounts per customer, and multiple customer service silos that do not cross over product lines. It’s possible that all these factors played into my poor customer experience. And every one of these problems is surmountable, if the company cares to solve them.
Unpaid Customer Labor
Trying to get the discount for which I was eligible, I spent:
❌ Four hours on a single customer service chat, in which I chatted with three customer service representatives (CSRs) who each read from the same script and could not assist. At the end of the chat, I was told to "call customer service."
❌ Two hours total on two different phone calls, speaking to five different CSRs. Only the very last one took an action that helped. I got an email a week later, saying my discount had been applied.
It seems Schmerizon could have applied the discount themselves all along, as I had repeatedly requested. But they didn’t; most of their CSRs were not equipped to escalate my issue to someone who could help. Only the last CSR out of eight knew what to do.
A few months before my Schmerizon experience, I ran a focus group about mobile phone plans. It was eye-opening. I learned that some consumers 'mobile carrier hop' to get the best rates and leave behind companies that frustrate them and don’t give loyal customers the best rates. I now understand why some consumers have adopted this strategy.
All the time I spent trying to get a Schmerizon discount I was eligible for was “unpaid customer labor”—time I had to invest because of a company’s failings. I first learned about unpaid customer labor in Lisa D. Dance's book, Today is the Perfect Day to Improve Customer Experiences!. (This book is a good read for product managers, UX strategsts and designers, and anyone with a responsibility to internal or external customers.)
I had certainly seen unpaid customer labor before but didn’t have a name for it. I had seen it in usability tests when participants got stuck in a loop or hit dead ends trying to find information or complete a transaction online. I had experienced unpaid customer labor when I had a serious illness and had to appeal multiple insurance denials to get the treatment I needed, resending the same documentation over and over, by an untraceable method, fax.
Some companies are counting on customer friction to make customers give up on receiving services and benefits, so the companies can save money. There’s a term for this malignant neglect. It’s called “sludge,” and you can read about it here in Knowledge at Wharton. In some companies, the strategy is to promote a discount or service to bring in customers, but then make it hard to actually access that deal. In others it may be to make it so hard for customers to access services and benefits, that they simply give up. Let’s do better.
Doing Better for Our Internal & External Customers
When we force customers to work too hard to use a website or app, contact our company, or access services and benefits, we increase their frustration, erode their goodwill and trust in the company, and risk losing them as customers and recommenders/evangelists. There are usually other options for them, whether that’s going to a competitor or doing nothing.
Being hard to work with risks reputational and monetary damage to our organizations. If your customers are external, that can mean lost membership dues, sales, volunteerism, etc. If your customers are internal, you risk damaging your corporate culture, collaboration, competitive edge, and resiliency. We should strive to do better, for our customers and our companies. Here are some suggestions:
Understand your customers, what they need most, and where they have difficulty interacting with your products and services—including customer service. Use that information to prioritize changes that will improve their customer experience—e.g., through clearer language, simpler navigation, better usability, chatbots that actually find answers or get a human involved who can, and/or better customer service references. Understanding customers means doing customer research (surveys, interviews, usability testing, and/or focus groups; we can help) and acting on your findings.
Commit to being customer-focused. If you have influence over the quality of customer experience, make it better. Whether your customers are internal or external, whether you are an executive, an individual contributor, or somewhere in between, you can improve the way individuals experience your company. If you work in an organization that has adopted a strategy of benign or malign neglect, you are not alone. You can still strive every day to work in accordance with your values; every time you make someone’s experience easier, that is a victory.
Assume most people are dealing with stressors of some kind. Being under stress can limit people’s patience and ability to navigate difficulties and unfamiliar environments. Remove as many barriers as possible for the people you serve. If you’re designing websites, products, and other experiences, think of how best to light the way for stressed-out people in a hurry.
Assume everyone’s time is valuable, and that they are valuable. Identify, predict, and seek to avoid harms in your company’s communications and products—whether these are active harms or the harm of being excluded. Be kind, and influence your company and its products and services to be kind. That's a win for everyone.
Having had this very avoidable and common customer service experience opened my eyes to the (sometimes calculated) indifference of organizations to their customers. I hope we can all agree that resentful customers getting less than they deserve is not the kind of success we want to achieve.
Need help understanding your customers better and improving your communications and services to meet their needs? Get in touch!
