In a recent Telegraph article, BT was named the worst customer service provider. We hear a lot about formulas for good customer service; what's the formula for bad customer service?
And I don't mean a little, the-rep-you-ended-up-with-was-just-having-a-bad-day bad. This study rates the majority of interactions as consistently unpleasant and ineffective for the customer.
How? The criteria seem to be these:
- Consistently rude staff
- Taking several minutes to get to an agent
- Being passed around to different agents
- Having to repeat one's request several times (lack of communication among agents or between the IVR system and the agents)
- Staff whose accents are hard to understand
- Long hold times
- Having to answer more than one security question
If you're the company, how do you rate with each of these? (Hint: if you don't know, try doing random customer satisfaction surveys at the end of calls. Trust me; they'll tell you how you rate.) If you're the customer, what would you add to this list?
[Cross-posted from the Spoken Communications blog]
