Customer dissatisfaction with quality goods and services offered in marketplace is more than a nuisance. The US economy is heavily dependent on increases in consumer spending. Such increases are hard to come by when consumers become less satisfied. The ACSI fell dramatically in fourth quarter of 2004. The Index now stands at 73.6 – dropping nearly 1% compared with third quarter. One would have to go back almost seven years to find an equivalent decline.

While high levels of customer satisfaction typically lead to company growth, it is not always case that business growth leads to satisfied customers. In many cases, opposite is true.

What’s interesting with this study is that since 1995 customer service has consistently not made grade, and services continue to top list in terms of customer dissatisfaction. Remember we’re all in service business!

Taken even further, growing customer dissatisfaction with contact center service levels is boosting use of IVRs as 20% of customers opt for self service channels over live agents. That’s 1 in 5 customers bypassing human because of poor service. (CRM Today, 2/18/05).

From past newsletters we know impact and cost of repeat calls, bad call experiences, poor service, (if you don’t go to http://www.human-technologies.com/newsletter_archive.html). What can you do starting right now?

With all options Internet brings, competition is literally a click away. If, as has been reported, 65% of your business comes from current customers, then in order to stay in business, you best focus on winning satisfaction and loyalty of those customers.

With continued attention on customer service, customer retention, and lifetime value of customer, it is no surprise that contact center operations continue to increase in importance as primary hub of a customer’s experience. The contact center is still most common way that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through center.

While much attention has been focused on technology and benefits of providing multiple channels for customer contact, little consideration has been directed to handling human part of equation—training Customer and Technical Service Representatives to field more than just telephone communications. With explosion of e-commerce, need to reinforce keeping human element in equation is paramount. Certainly now more than ever before in history, customer-centric service is a necessity.

Twenty five years from now customers will still be human beings, still be driven by desires and needs. Virtual environments do not create virtual customers. Except for simplest transactions, some customers still need to be connected with and nurtured by a live person. Amazon.com has learned this. They employ hundreds of traditional customer service representatives using phone lines to help customers with questions that cannot be dealt with online. With ability to handle simple transactions available by using sophisticated, self-service technology, customer calls, faxes, and/or e-mails are more complex, more complicated, sometime even escalated, heightening stress levels.

At same time, research has identified Customer Service and Technical Representative as one of ten most stressful jobs in America today, with job stress costing employers an estimated $300+ billion yearly in absenteeism, lowered productivity, rising health insurance costs and other medical expenses (up from $200 + billion just ten years ago.) A recent NIOSH study reported that 50% of employees view job stress as a major problem in their lives--double from a decade ago.

Lines of demarcation have blurred and change is rampant in today’s center. Why? Because of our cell phones, voice mail, faxback, PDA’s, and e-mail. We are now more available and accessible than ever before. The lines are no longer clear as to where our jobs or projects begin and end—they can follow us home again and again.

In today’s competitive marketplace there is little difference between products and services. What makes difference--what distinguishes one company from another--is its relationship with customer. Who has awesome responsibility for representing themselves, their companies, perhaps their industry in general? Front line representatives. The ability of a company to provide human-to-human connections--back and forth live communication--continues to be critically important. The fact is voice is most natural and powerful human interface, real time or otherwise. That isn’t going to change any time soon. To customer, people are inseparable from services they provide. Actually, person on other end of phone is company. It is no wonder, then, that companies with superior people management, invest heavily in training and retraining, reinforcing human element.

Yet customers still leave. The latest statistics on why are:

•45% because of poor service •20% because of lack of attention.

This means that 65% of your customers leave because of something your front line is, or is not, doing.

•15% for a better product •15% for a cheaper product and •5% other

This is good and bad news. It’s bad news because that’s a high percentage. On other hand, it’s good news because there is something you can do about it—it resides on human side.