Thought Leadership

Can technology ensure a good customer experience?

A friend of mine called me a couple of years ago to let me know that he had just had a bad automated chat experience on a certain website. He couldn't believe how badly "Company X's" deployment worked. Of course, I went on to Company X's site with great curiosity. What really surprised me was not how bad the experience was. I could see exactly why my friend had sent me there. Everything that he had said about it was true. What was most surprising was that on closer examination I realized that Company X wasn't using automation. They were using live chat. And their results were terrible, even bizarre. Their agents were apparently only giving the customers' questions a cursory look and then replying with the first related shortcut answer that they came across. It gave the unmistakable impression of a very poorly set up (and very slow) conversational self-service system. Despite being live assistance, my friend had thought it was bad, even for a fully automated system!

I was really struck by this sad example of online customer service. Obviously Company X was getting worst of both worlds in this case, with a poor self-service quality customer experience being provided at live assistance rates. A perfect nightmare. Yet they seemed to have all of the right elements in play to provide a reasonable experience. They had live agents, the gold standard for online customer service. And clearly they had some type of knowledge management system, one that appeared to include a number of shortcut answers. Maybe not the most advanced system, but certainly one that should provide at least competent results. It seemed to prove the old rule that no technology is going to be a success if it's implemented poorly. I had to wonder how these agents were being compensated, and what KPI's were being used to manage their contact center. It also made me curious whether the managers had any real reporting that would alert them to their situation.

Obviously no technology is fail-safe. In the end, as the old saying goes, "it's the Indian, not the arrow." But Company X always serves as a strong reminder to me of the importance of having all of the pieces in alignment. Management goals, Key Performance Indicators, and employee compensation all have to be set correctly. And vendors like ourselves have to provide as much insight as possible and as many levers as possible so that managers can see problems as they arise and correct course. We're all in this together if we want to create great customer service.

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