At the sixty-five and a half minute mark, I hung up the phone. I was done waiting.
In my last blog post, I wrote about employees having the permission to discern when a policy needs to be broken. This week I want to write about giving employees the discernment to solve problems quickly, saving customers time and effort. A colleague shared a recent customer service interaction in which a little discernment would have gone a very loooooong way.
Real World Story: I planned to be away from home for an unknown number of months, so I requested a few of my more expensive home utilities be suspended for four months, one of those services was my internet service. I called my provider and arranged a four-month suspension. As it turns out, a few months into my hiatus, the world got hit with the COVID-19 pandemic and all travel came to a halt, and we were all ordered to stay put. As a precaution, I called my internet service provider and arranged an extension on my service suspension. Not a problem. We’re happy to help you out during this crisis. Great. Thank you.
Then I started to receive overdue notices.
I got notices on my phone via email, then by text and then through phone calls, so I called my service provider to let them know I hadn’t had any service in more than five months! The service rep went through the notes on my account and discovered that although I was given the suspension and then the extension, the second suspension never went through. My account was active. So I’m thinking, okay, they’ll reverse all charges and will suspend my service until I return home. This will be short and sweet.
Sixty-five minutes later…I’m still on the phone. I’m waiting for the service agent to try and figure out where the problem occurred. While I understand due diligence is important and necessary, the solution was obvious. I didn’t feel I needed to be on hold for over an hour to discover where the problem was. We know there’s a problem. The service rep should have just fixed it, reversed my charges and then figured out the rest later by opening up a ticket and then following up on it.
At the sixty-five and a half minute mark, I hung up the phone. I was done waiting. Shortly thereafter, I received a survey asking to rate how satisfied I was with the resolution of my problem.
The next day, I received a message letting me know I could go on a payment plan to catch up on my delinquent account.
I swear I would laugh frantically if I weren’t too busy impersonating my favorite crazy-eyed crying emoji. “Exasperated” doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about my interaction with the customer service representative at HughesNet.
Strategies that Turn it Around:
- Don’t get caught up in the problem. Most of the time, customers don’t care who or what caused a problem. So don’t dwell on trying to figure out where the finger needs to be pointed, especially when a customer is waiting on us to solve the problem.
- Do get caught up on the solution. If a solution is obvious, concentrate on that. Fix the problem quickly and then follow up later if you need to. You can always call back a customer if the issue requires it.
Remember: Customers are not in the business of customer service. We are. So even when a customer has a complicated problem, we should be able to ensure they spend the least amount of time of inconvenience waiting for us to solve their issue.
Does your organization give team members the authority to discern when a problem can be fixed quickly in order to allow customers to go on their merry way, thus saving them time, effort and aggravation?