If you can resolve a customer’s problem on their first contact with the company, they’ll actually become more loyal than before they experienced the problem.
By Evan Ramzipoor, Workflow contributor
Dissatisfied customers have more ways to make themselves heard than ever before. Some of these communication channels offer a direct line to the company, but others, thanks to the internet, are not only public but potentially viral. The result is that businesses are struggling to keep up. The added headache of managing it all drives yet more complaints when companies don’t reply fast enough.
“You have one person monitoring the emails, while another person manages the Twitter or Facebook pages,” says Forrest Morgeson, an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business who focuses on customer experience (CX). Because the channels are siloed, service agents don’t necessarily have insight into the complaining customer’s problem and history.
Companies are under incredible and constant pressure to respond to customers as quickly as possible on whatever channel those customers are using to air their dissatisfaction. If they don’t, they face immediate and public outcry. Yet when they do resolve complaints quickly, it’s good for business, according to Morgeson.
“If you can resolve a customer’s problem on their first contact with the company, they’ll actually become more loyal than before they experienced the problem,” he says.