Have you ever been asked to follow somebody by taking the lead? Sounds a bit contradictory, uh? I’m quite sure that you’ve had conflicting customer experiences that have influenced your following decisions. For brands, the price to pay in such situations is high: compromising customer’s trust. So join me to see a real case and deep dive into the whats and whys.
Here’s an example
Last week I had to renew my subscription to a professional web service. A few days earlier had received an email reminding me to make the payment within May. That was good because I was timely informed, so I decided to proceed as usual using my credit card. When I tried to make the transaction with my usual credit card though, I was prompted with the message ‘failed to authorize. MasterCard is not supported.’ However the MC logo is still shown as welcome along with other cards!
Why conflicting customer experiences happen?
Good question. Even though I don’t know this organization customer support processes, I’ve helped many other brands optimize theirs so I can answer. In fact the root cause reason of many conflicting experiences is poor internal communication. Here are two examples:
- Customer Service members have received an information from another department that may affect customer experience. Nevertheless they do not timely update their processes and or communication / online content forms.
- Other departments have made changes (e.g. decided to stop accepting payments with a credit card brand) but they did not advise the customer service team. Because ‘we did not think it was so important’. Take a deep breath. Pause. Now you may keep reading.
In both cases such an internal communication gap generates bad experiences.
Consequences become even worse when the issue affect many customers at the same time – generating incidents / crises over your online public channels.
More inspirations for you
The smartest brands take into account all crucial aspects of online customer relationship. Therefore I’ve decided to make useful content that you may use to spread the word within your organization, in any department. Have you watched #GreatConversations yet? It’s my video-series covering hot Digital Customer Service topics with fresh episodes every week. Check out all episodes on my YouTube channel.
How about your Digital Customer Service?
Many organizations are trying do leverage online support but some of them fail because they just ‘copy and paste’ other business models. What I do instead is listening to your needs before taking together the best decisions to stand out from competitors. Helping you master digital conversations because each of them is a business opportunity.
If you felt good vibes whilst reading these lines let’s start our conversation.
Image credit: Unsplash.com
