Being Responsive to clients is critical to customer retention:
Have you noticed how hard it is to get through to big organizations? They have all of the high tech systems, and yet getting through in a timely manner is incredibly hard.
The top obstacles are:
- Finding a phone number to call. Often times it is not clearly posted on the website.
- Long wait times if you do find the number.
- Chat boxes that are answered quickly by untrained staff.
- The ability to solve the problem on the first phone call.
- The need to send repeated follow up emails.
- The excuses for mediocre performance.
- The costs of lost production solving the issues. The frustration of explaining the same problem over and over again.
What went wrong?
There are several theories that include:
- Big companies hire employees who don’t take ownership or pride in their work.
- They are understaffed.
- The problem has to be escalated.
- The workers lack training in all aspects of the problem.
- The major corporations are not seeing a downturn in profits and online reputation is secondary to profits.
- Morale is too low at the big firms to impact customer service.
What can be done?
Whatever the reason for the big firms lack of responsiveness or attention to detail-Customer service is still king. There can be no excuse for neglecting clients – who will eventually leave once the frustration hits boiling point.
It is likely true that the big firms know ( by algorithm) at which point you will leave them. So what are the solutions?
The Solutions include:
- Hiring smaller more proficient professionals to do the job.
- Finding firms that answer their phone with highly trained employees.
- Working with business that value you as a customer.
- Not being as tolerant to mediocrity as you are used to with larger firms.
You are encouraged to fire the big firms who cant be reached, who are poorly staffed with under performing employees. Hire the best and succeed with new vendors in 2021. This is my new years resolution for my business!
