If you’re going to the Engage Customer Summit – Mon 13th Nov, London – drop in and see us on stand 8. You can also catch Katie’s talk “The 5 Service Communication Habits that Drive Success” in Hall 4.
Please also keep your fingers crossed for the awards do. We’re jointly nominated with Nectar for the programme of work we completed — covering everything from online FAQ answers to webchat responses and training to quality score cards — boosting their CSat scores by 12%!
A big rise is in CSat is always great news, but did the programme provide bang for Nectar’s buck? James Moir, Managing Director at Nectar certainly thinks so:
“Hard ROI for behavioural change initiatives can be difficult to achieve. The results for this programme speak for themselves. It’s one of the most effective things we’ve done to increase our key CSat measure.”
You can find out more about our work with Nectar in our video and case study.
If you’d like to know more about our improvement programmes for online answers to FAQs, webchat, social media, voice (or any other media for that matter) just drop me a line.
We’ve evolved with our clients over the years; as the face of the contact centre has changed, so have we. What was once a call centre is now a multi-channel contact centre, dealing with enquiries via the customer channel of choice: phone, webchat, email and whitemail. Chatbots are a natural next step.
As service communications specialists, we spend our days talking to clients and experiencing their customer service functions, whether that’s across large and often multiple contact centres – or smaller teams. And you can’t deny that artificial intelligence is a hot topic and tells a tempting story: it’ll save you money on overheads and repeat contact, it’ll help you get better information/data on your customers, it’ll be quick and easy for your customers etc. That said, a contact centre or customer service function always needs to strike the balance between operational efficiency and good customer experience.
Implementing chatbots
AI is still in its infancy within contact centres, certainly in the UK. Some companies are already embracing innovation and implementing this new capability but many others are only just starting to evaluate how they could integrate it.
When speaking to clients or listening to specialists talking about the world of AI, virtual assistants or chatbots, the focus tends to be on the functionality and efficiencies that these tools can deliver. There’s no denying the benefits of AI, but I still question, ‘at what cost to the brand and customer experience?’
As with any new approach to customer service e.g. webchat, it’s still vital for companies to be clear from the outset on the customer experience of a bot and how you want to ‘sound’. As we work with more and more clients on exploring what chatbots could mean for them and how we can prepare, we talk about two essential ingredients:
Ingredient 1: Tone of Voice
Speaking to your customers in a clear, consistent tone of voice is no different when you’re thinking about AI. There are constant developments in Natural Language understanding (NLU) – the way machines can process and interpret customers’ interactions and then react accordingly. But, as with any touchpoint, you still need to make sure that as much as the bot is reacting and responding to customer requirements, there’s a reflection of your true brand promise through its ‘voice’ – text, speech, images and video.
It’s important to look at the brand persona and language they use to make sure they still replicate a human, warm and empathetic tone with customers, as well as any other distinguishing features that set a company apart from its competitors.
Our core competency is how companies talk to their customers through service channels. As part of our process, we look not only at what the ‘brand’ or the organisation’s persona is, but we’re also focussed on the customers or end users. Our key aim is to make sure that whatever language we use a) resonates with them and b) delivers the right outcomes for both company and customer.
Ingredient 2: Knowledge Management
One question that came up at the recent ‘AI in Customer Engagement’ forum was:
‘Will there be any circumstances where AI will deliver the opposite i.e. negative outcomes?’
The answer was ‘Yes, if it’s not implemented properly’. For any bot to be effective, it must understand your customers’ needs as well as what help or outcomes are available to them.
This question led me to a realisation of something that’s true of today; Whether it’s training agents directly or giving them the tools to provide the best customer experience possible, you need to have a good way for customer-facing staff (or interfaces) to easily have all the right information ready for the customer. You need well-structured and accessible knowledge management.
As a customer, we all face the metaphorical wall of ‘No’ or ‘I’m afraid you can’t’ or ‘Sorry, I can’t help you’. Sometimes it’s to do with agent capability and sometimes it’s to do with what information is available across an organisation.
We often find, in the work that we do, that there’s a lack of centralised information or data that clearly outlines: a) what the company can do to help a customer b) what a customer can do themselves This applies both to providing the best assistance to a specific enquiry as well as proactively offering ideas or information to offer service above and beyond.
A bot or virtual assistant is only as good as the knowledge and tools that you give it, so the best way to prepare for AI is to consolidate and craft your base of process, knowledge and customer insight. As organisations use knowledge in different ways, there are different systems and approaches to how you can organise your data. Investing in this sort of taxonomy from the outset will mean you’ve mapped out the complexities of your organisation into something AI-digestible.
Our knowledge management projects empower your business to give customers the answers they need, quickly and clearly, leading to higher satisfaction scores. Read more about our results and Knowledge Management approach, or get in touch for a chat about how we can help you get AI-ready.
More than ever before, this General Election seems hinged on people and personalities rather than parties and policies. Who seems credible? Who is authentic? Who can we place our trust in?
To garner trust, politicians need to master three disciplines – their words, tone and body language. All are of vital importance.
And whether you’re speaking to colleagues or customers, proficiency in these same three disciplines will help inspire confidence. Here are some of the things we can learn from politicians.
A way with words
Barack Obama was an accomplished speaker, even dubbed the ‘orator-in-chief’. He seemed thoughtful, fluent, precise and unruffled. He chose his words carefully and was rarely lost for them. All things which demonstrated composure and self-control. He was a master of the pause. And during that pause we leaned in, expectant in the silence, to hear what was coming next.
When it comes to words, you have only to look at the recent furore over Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott’s comments on policing figures, or the flurry of tweetsabout Theresa May’s repetition of ‘Strong and Stable’, to see that a politician’s words are scrutinised. And how much getting them right matters.
The study showed that political candidates with deeper voices tend to win more votes. Voter interviews suggested that deeper voices (both male and female) convey physical strength, competence and integrity. In another part of the study, researchers also found that women with lower voices were perceived as stronger, more trustworthy and competent.
If I speak quietly, with a faltering, broken tone and round off sentences with a questioning upward inflection, you’re unlikely to trust what I’m saying. If I use a centred, relaxed voice, a confident unwavering tone and downward inflections at the end of my sentences, you’re likely to believe me. Why? Because when we listen to someone, we put them through our own internal lie detector, to judge whether we feel we can trust them or not. And their tone is the tell. It reveals underlying emotions and attitudes.
Body of evidence
Another feature of Obama’s delivery was his stillness. It meant we could focus on just the words. This is the opposite of the current POTUS, Donald Trump who uses a variety of distinct hand gestures to hammer home his point.
Speaking of which, all eyes were on the Trump / Macron handshake recently. In all these gestures, there’s a duel of confidence and dominance. The ‘ownership’ symbol of the guiding ‘hand on the back’ seen frequently when politicians meet. It was memorably used as Blair and Bush went through the door of Number 10 some years back. As for confidence, Nick Clegg’s assured demeanour in the 2010 Leader’s Debate turned him from ‘also-ran’ to ‘contender’ overnight, with one poll putting the Lib Dems up by 14 points after his appearance.
Be yourself
Why is ‘being yourself’ so prized when it comes to trust? In the States, they might call it ‘owning your story’ or ‘keeping it real’. During Donald Trump’s election campaign, a blunder or inconvenient truth seemed ultimately to further his cause. Many felt he was candid and unambiguous. By contrast, Hillary Clinton came across as polished and rehearsed, which may have made her seem less genuine and ironically less trustworthy. Impulsive spontaneity in the case of Trump, equalled the perception of honesty – even if it got him into hot water. Dylan Byers, writing for CNN, said “Despite two-and-a-half decades in the public eye, Clinton is still trying to convince American voters that she is real, authentic and, yes, likable.” Another who seems to score well for ‘being himself’ is Jeremy Corbyn – with the word ‘principled’ coming up more that the word ‘polished’, in reviews and column inches about him.
Here are some tips for speaking with confidence and earning trust:
Keep your word – whether it’s in personal relationships, business or politics, we trust people who do what they say they will.
Make the script your own – the job of an actor is to bring the written word to life in a believable way. Politicians must do the same when giving speeches. If you use scripting in your contact centre or templates in your written communications, make sure they sound fluent and natural.
Vocal power – we work harder to listen to someone who is speaking too loudly, just like we find it harder to read phrases written in capital letters. We also get frustrated by those who are very quietly spoken, as we have to double our efforts to hear them. We may miss something, which leads to repetition and extra time on our part.
Pitch – lower tones can translate as calm, relaxed confidence and integrity in the speaker. We tend to use a higher pitch with stronger emotions such as anxiety, surprise, excitement, anger. And strong emotions are therefore not associated with being ‘in control’. We also associate higher pitch with younger voices, and as youth tends to correspond with inexperience, it doesn’t usually inspire trust.
Upward inflections – sometimes called a ‘high rising terminal’, this is a lift in intonation that makes a statement sound like a question. It can put doubt into the mind of the listener. Downward inflections at the end of sentences or statements give a feeling of assured certainty. We can believe and trust in the speaker and are less likely to question things.
Pace – too fast or slow and once again it’s heavy on effort for the listener. Mirroring the pace and energy of the customer can be useful except if they are rushing to get off the call and you’re struggling to get your words out quickly enough. Try to slow the pace a little without stressing the customer and pick up on their cues as to when they are ready to leave the call.
Pauses – “nature abhors a silence” as the saying goes. Often if there’s a gap in conversation we feel the need to fill it. But when explaining something or in public speaking, it’s important to give the audience time to take it in, and consider if they have understood or want to ask questions. Pauses last a couple of seconds, and are not the same as leaving long silences during phone conversations.
Posture – how you hold yourself has a huge effect on the way you sound and the way you’re perceived. In a contact centre, the advisor with their head in their hands gives off signals of a failing call. The pacing salesman shows signs of nervous energy. Take a leaf out of Amy Cuddy’s book and stand or sit using a strong, confident but relaxed body pose. It will influence how you feel. In challenging situations keep both feet on the ground and regulate your breathing as it will help to soothe your mind and strengthen your voice.
“We’ve been able to make simple changes – within our existing systems and technology – which have had an immediate and positive impact, in reducing contact.” Customer Service Director.
Results
We’ve achieved some amazing results from our work with our Water Company client!
30% reduction in unwanted contact
60% reduction in calls from billing letters
Supported a big jump in Ofwat league table
Internal admin time reduced, by streamlining operational and billing templates
Challenge
Improve customer experiences across voice, digital, SMS, written and printed communication and channels, reducing frustrating, ‘unwanted’ contact, where possible.
Solution: Service Communications Programme
Improving service performance through consumer insights and ‘joining up’ inbound and outbound contact across Billing, Customer Service, Network Operations, Water Testing and Metering:
Consumer research and insights – getting customer feedback on bills
Creating and embedding a new tone of voice, to drive the right behaviours
Templates and guidelines for bills, calls, emails, letters, webchat and printed comms
Streamlining the IVR to improve call steering and self-service
Communication training workshops, for call centre and field teams
Improving outbound SMS effectiveness, with easy-to-use, template messages and URLs
Redesigning printed leaflets and
Digital, web service content – including FAQs and emergency alerts
Our consumer research
To understand how bills impact customer behaviour and contact. These are some of the things that customers, we surveyed, told us:
41% of customers asked, said they had contacted/considered contacting their water company, because they couldn’t understand their bill
80% of these customers said they were happy with online-only bills
25% said their bills weren’t useful
Based on these customer insights, and with a better understanding of contact drivers, our key goals were to:
Make bills and related comms, clearer and easier to understand (to reduce contact)
Improve online help and best ways to contact
Look at where the bill featured in overall contact and the customer’s journey
Look at self-service options, with focus on home movers (the current SIM survey estimates this is the reason for 11% of calls)
Better promotion of Direct Debit – in a way that’s more benefit-lead for customers
Unwanted contact is as frustrating for customers, as it is for companies – it continues to be a problem for most of our clients, within utilities and across many other sectors. If you’d like to know how we can reduce frustrating contact for you (while also improving customer satisfaction), drop us a line
Our purpose is To Make Great Service Happen. Anywhere.
To achieve this, we have to have many things; a capable, talented and engaging team, a relentless drive to get quality and results, brilliant ways of working and a friendly & collaborative approach. A sharp pencil (to tackle super tight budgets) also helps.
How we apply these things, varies from client to client. But to keep things short and sweet, here are 15 things we’ve done for clients over the past year, that we could also do for you:
Contact deflection and avoidance: This is – frankly – our sweet spot. Our re-designed emails, letters, phone messages and digital content have consistently driven contact rates down at levels ranging from 5% through to 82%.
Service design: For some clients we’ve been working ‘wider’ than simple rewrites or training staff. We now work on holistic customer journeys considering the overall set-up, to design the best service across all channels.
Trained offshore agents: Our last training sessions for teams based in Mumbai and Bangalore pushed one client’s customer satisfaction scores up by a whopping 9%.
Consumer research: Working with ICMand YouGov, to date we’ve polled over 20,000 consumers to get their views on bills, letters, emails, webchat, voices and even the use of emojis in communication.
Global, multi-language programmes: A recent project involved translating 300,000 words and recording and delivering over 100,000 voice prompts, in 31 languages, in an 8 week timeframe. We made 3 errors. Which we corrected in 24 hours.
FCA compliance: We’ve designed letters and emails that met all compliance criteria and helped to maintain our clients’ current levels of consumer renewals. Talking of which…
Retained and grown revenue: Testing of one our new letters showed renewal rates could not only be maintained, but would increase! When each 1% means £262K in revenue, we know this particular client comfortably exceeded their ROI.
Social messaging, live chat and AI: As contact centre comms specialists, we’re moving with the times. Increasingly looking at effective and impactful ways to run webchat and social messaging services……with a dabble in chatbots’ tone too.
Created and tested IVR experiences: Cutting transfers, improving FCR and making things easy for callers are our usual goals. One project in May included super-fast deadlines; the client’s experience was live within 2 weeks of engaging us.
Tone of voice strategy: In some cases, we’ve created a whole new TOV from scratch. In others, we’ve taken existing guidelines and distilled them into something much more actionable (ultimately more practical) for customer service.
Knowledge management: We’ve created knowledge articles, content, intranets and scripts, having mapped out reasons for contact and conversational content guidelines.
QA frameworks: We’ve adapted and evolved QA monitoring frameworks to expand on process and compliance monitoring, and help teams support agents on soft skills, like rapport-building, empathy, FCRand next contact avoidance.
Complaints handling: We’ve improved complaints handling in calls, chat, emails and F2F conversations. At our public workshops, we’ve also shared our research in what consumers want to see in complaints resolutions and comms.
Letters, emails and webforms: Improving service quality, tone and reduced contact can be done with better templates and modules to answer queries, first time. For one client our work will underpin £0.5m+ communications that go out every year.
Video: Corporate videos, interviews, launch videos, self-service videos – we’ve collaborated with clients to storyboard, produce and deliver video for use on youtube, intranets and at events.
It goes without saying that extra care is needed when you’re communicating with large groups of customers about sensitive issues. For example, the stakes are always high when letting them know about their bills, price rises, renewals, changes to terms and conditions or even regulatory messages etc.
The irony is that if you get it right nobody notices. But get it wrong and the damage is instant with large numbers of cancellations, customer complaints not to mention a costly increase in contacts to handle.
But what does extra care mean in practice? We work on high stakes communications from bills to renewals letters. Our approach is to design — taking into account both the needs of the business and consumer — and test our ideas with customers as we go. The result is that design decisions are continually validated. And if there’s a problem, it’s spotted early.
6 tips for getting it right.
1. Success criteria — Decide what the success criteria are in terms of outcomes (e.g. contact volume, renewal rates, CSat etc.). And contributory factors (readability, whether what’s most important is easy to find etc.). These should be based on what you’ve seen previously for something similar.
2. Decide what you need to say — Make a list of everything that you want to say. It’s worth breaking this down into must and nice to haves, just in case compromises need to be made further down the line.
3. Find out what customers want — This could be a qualitative (e.g. interviews) or quantitative (e.g. survey questions with defined answers) study with your existing customers. Or, just put yourself in their shoes and ask others what they think.
4. Design (how to say it) — Sometimes your needs and those of customers are the same. When they’re not you’ll need to strike a balance. Customer focussed organisations compromise on their own needs. When it comes to creating the actual communication think graphic design, language, structure (what’s most important first) and written tone of voice. Some of these may be covered by your corporate identity manual and you’ll need to work within those guidelines. Our Cheshire CAT (CCAT) service writing rules are another useful guide.
5. Test — Try out what you’re thinking on small groups of consumers as you go. This approach is sometimes called ‘Fail Fast’. You’ll quickly pick up whether there’s anything major wrong and be able to correct it before too much time has been spent. When it comes to testing ‘Think, Feel and Do’ is a useful rule of thumb. Try and understand the logical thought processes of customers (Think), their emotions (Feel) and what the likely outcomes will be (Do). Groups of 6 – 12 people that represent your customer demographic are a good start. Going around the design and test loop 3 – 6 times is not unusual.
6. Validation — Once you have a final design proposal, a validation test is critical. The aim of this is to predict — with a greater degree of accuracy — what all your customers will do when they receive your communication. You can also validate contributory factors, such as readability and whether what’s most important is easy to find etc. Two types of validation to consider are:
• Real world — this may be harder to set up but will give the most accurate results. You’ll need to send the proposed communication, or a link, to a subset of your customers and measure the actual outcomes. You can also do a post contact survey to validate other factors.
• Simulated — this is easier to do but is less accurate. Sometimes it’s not possible to run a real world test for reasons of secrecy for example. With simulated tests you’re aiming to mimic real world conditions in so far as you can. Outcomes can be measured by asking what customers are likely to do. However, saying something and doing something are not the same. So, there’s a greater degree of uncertainty because of this.
For both types of tests the group sizes will need to be large enough to make your findings statistically significant. The acid test is whether what you find meets the success criteria you’ve set at the first stage.
How far you go with design and testing is going to depend on how much is at risk. But when just a 1% reduction in renewals or increase in contact could cost millions, the benefits of being able to understand the consequences far outweigh the cost.
If you had to choose what was the most significant change in the written word over the last 20 years then the use of smileys, emoticons and emojis might well be it. Although the use of pictograms in writing dates back hundreds of years, it’s within this digital age of webchat, texts, email and social media that they’ve really taken off.
Instagram recently said that 50% of posts on their social media platform used emojis. Based on a UK study researchers at Bangor University also say that they’re the fastest growing language in history. This upsurge is put down to the fact that they can easily be understood in all cultures, allow writers to express more complex emotions clearly and are free to spread – at the speed of light – across a population that’s now continually connected by the internet.
As they’ve become such a regular part of our personal lives you might expect that we want to see smileys, emoticons and emojis in service communications too. However when we recently ran a study looking at webchat it showed customers weren’t quite as happy about businesses using smileys and emoticons as you might think. When we also saw this poll by YouGov – saying that consumers thought businesses are trying too hard with emojis – we thought it was worth finding out what people really think about emoticons and smileys being used in written service communications of all types.
The results below are what we found for emails, social media and letters. If you’d like to know what customers said when it comes to texts and webchat – drop us a line:
Emoticons are least wanted in the older written service channels
Perhaps not surprisingly letters were where customers least wanted to see a smiley or emoticon and Social Media was where they were wanted most. What also stands out is that including them in email wasn’t well liked with only 18% of consumers saying they wanted or preferred seeing them whilst 39% said they didn’t want them or preferred they weren’t used.
Younger age groups are more likely to prefer them, but not in emails
Across nearly every form of written service communication younger generations preferred emoticons more, with objection growing steadily with age. The one exception was email where 24% of the 18-24 group said they want / prefer them compared to 28% of the 25-35 age group. The view of the 18-24 age group to them being used in email was approaching that of them being used in letters. It may mean that this age group view emails in a similar way to letters – as something that requires a greater degree of formality. Smileys are most at home in the South East
When it came to attitudes to emoticons within different regions there wasn’t a huge difference. But Wales / South West (46%) and Scotland (44%) was where they were least wanted and the South East had least objection (39%). Gender isn’t a divide (for once)
In most of the studies we’ve completed previously there have been some differences in how women and men react. However, as far as emoticons and smileys go, there was no significant difference in opinion when it comes to letters, emails and social media.
Because smileys, emoticons and emojis have become such a regular part of our personal lives you might expect that we’d be happy to see them in service communications as well. But – as our study shows – as customers we’re much less keen overall.
Research notes The consumer research was conducted for us by ICM. They interviewed a random sample of 2,001 GB adults aged 18+ online between 2nd – 4th December 2016. Surveys were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. The worst case margin of error is ± 2.2% at a 95% confidence level. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules you can find further information at www.icmresearch.com
This year we were lucky enough to be invited to the LIAR IV politeness / impoliteness linguistics conference in Manchester. At the conference, we presented our latest study on what customers think about service email greetings.
Here’s what we think you should bear in mind when choosing your greeting. If you want more information on why, we’ve summarised what we covered at the conference below the tips.
1. Take your cues from how your customer says hello — nothing will tell you more about how someone likes to be greeted than how they write to you. That doesn’t necessarily mean copying their greeting. Just bear in mind how formal or informal (e.g. Dear vs Hi) and personal or impersonal (e.g. first name vs no name) it is.
2. Think about your sector, and why customers are in touch — our most recent study showed that they shape customer expectations of how formal greetings will be. Complaints to banks was where most formality was expected. Product information from retailers was where customers anticipated least.
3. What does your brand say? — consider how your company wants to relate to customers. Perhaps you’re the kind of brand that breaks expectations and surprises people (in a good way). For example, Banking may be where the majority of customers anticipate formality. But customers of Virgin (a brand that’s well known for it’s straight talking friendly service) might want less formality — and some customers might be a bit disappointed if Virgin were to write like others.
4. Get customers’ names right — although choosing the right greeting is important, it’s not the only thing you should be thinking about. In our survey, spelling a customer’s name wrong firmly came top of what was thought of as inappropriate. See below for what customers said they’d do if you get it wrong.
5. Hello, I’m a robot — as well as how your advisors say hi, think about how automatic responses sound too. Confirming that an email’s landed in your inbox, or how long it’ll take you to reply, may not require a greeting at all. If you decide to leave it off, it has to be clear that there isn’t a person behind the email though. And it’s a good idea to make any follow-up email from your team feel that bit more personal.
Hello science, goodbye guesswork?
Question: How formal do you find these greetings? (Greetings ranked by mean average scores.)
We asked people to score some commonly used greetings according to how formal they find them. No big surprises when we averaged the formality scores: ‘To whom it may concern’ came out most formal (along with ‘Dear Mr Smith’). And a simple ‘Hi’ was most informal.
But take a closer look below — and you’ll see the averages hide a wide spread of opinion. One man’s ‘Dear Paul’ is another’s ‘Hi Paul’.
In our previous greetings blog, we noted that 70% of people thought that they weren’t greeted appropriately at times. The difference of opinion on formality might be one of the things that’s causing this. Because if we all agreed what’s the most polite, we’d all be getting it right more often.
Question: How formal do you find these greetings? (Percentage of consumers choosing each factor for every greeting.)
Sector and reason for contact shape customers’ expectations
Question: How formal do you think greetings should be? (Sectors and reasons for contact ranked by mean averages.)When we asked about the formality of email hellos for different sectors, consumers said banks / building societies should be most formal and retailers the least. When it came to reasons for contact, complaints came top for formality, with product info at the bottom.One well-known politeness theory by academics Brown and Levinson says that how we choose to communicate is based on the ‘weightiness’ of the interaction — the ‘social distance’ between participants, their relative ‘power’ and the ‘imposition’ of a request. Our results show that when ‘serious’ matters are being discussed, more formality is expected (e.g. customers expected greetings from banks in complaint responses to be most formal). Whether seriousness is the same thing as weightiness still has us wondering. Brown and Levinson also say that formality is just one way to be polite — some companies may choose camaraderie while others may prefer deference.
Greetings are important, as are names
Question: What’s most inappropriate? (Percentage of consumers rating a factor first)
We thought it’d be interesting to see how important greetings are when compared to another well-known (and related) customer gripe — getting their name right.57% said they thought it was the most inappropriate of the options, beating ‘no greeting’ by some margin. Making sure that customer details are correct lays the foundation for a great greeting.
The cost of getting it wrong
If a greeting is inappropriate, which of these are you most likely to do? (Customers could choose multiple outcomes. Percentage of consumers choosing an outcome.)
What do customers do if a greeting is inappropriate? The good news: you probably won’t lose a customer just because they didn’t like the greeting. Leaving, telling an organisation and becoming a vocal detractor were at the bottom of the list.
The bad news: ‘Trust the email less’ (54%) came top, followed by ‘Nothing’ (44%) and ‘Trust the company less’ (41%). Greetings set the tone of the interaction, and they can undermine the credibility of your message before you’ve even properly started — making customers more likely to call, write back, or doubt you.
Last updated 27th July 2016
Research notes Adults aged 18+ in GB interviewed online via Survey Monkey between 7 – 10 April 2016. Surveys were conducted across the country. Margin of error: ± 4.6% at a 95% confidence level assuming the worst case (50% of consumers selecting a factor).
When a story about how to apologise hit the news headlines recently, we thought it was time for us to have a look again at the hardest word. We reviewed the original research (that sparked the story) published in the journal of Negotiations and Conflict Management Research. And looked at current service best practices from the public as well as private sectors. Then we asked our team for their psychological, linguistic, voice, legal and service views.
The list below is what we think you should consider when you apologise. If you want to see and hear them applied to some real life examples, take a look at our spoken and written complaints workshops.
1. How and who — think about how much harm was done and the needs of the customer. Then consider how you should apologise: in writing, over the phone or face-to-face. And who should say it: an advisor, team leader, manager or your Chief Executive.
2. Say sorry — just the word may be powerful enough — customers want to know that you care enough to say it. For example: “I’m really sorry that your delivery didn’t arrive when we said it would.”
3. Admit that it went wrong — provide a short summary of what the problem was and say clearly that this was wrong. It’s important that you’re specific to show you understand exactly what has caused any dissatisfaction. You should also acknowledge any knock-on effects of the problem that the customer mentioned. For example: “Your delivery definitely should have arrived the next day. I can see from your email it was very frustrating that you set aside time to receive something that didn’t turn up — especially as you paid extra for next day delivery.”
4. Accept responsibility — for the problem and any harm done.
5. Provide an explanation — say why went things went wrong and that this was not intentional or personal. For example: “Your delivery was part of a consignment that was held up because of exceptionally heavy snow overnight.” If there’s no valid explanation, you could simply say that there’s no excuse for the problem, or that you’ll look into what went wrong.
6. Say why things will be different in future — this may include letting customers know what steps you’re taking to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again. Sometimes customers are just unlucky — our snow-delayed delivery for instance. Here consider explaining that you do keep track of things so that customers feel reassured you have everything under control. And that next time things will be better. For example: “I know this won’t come as much comfort but this happens rarely and 99.8% of our parcels do arrive on time. Your next delivery will get to you next day.” This part of your apology is very important if you want customers to stay and recommend you to others.
7. Make amends — no doubt you’ll have your own rules about what can be offered: compensation, replacement and good will gestures etc. What’s important from a communication point of view is that you clearly state what you’re offering and when the customer can expect to receive this.
8. Say thank you — In a financial services study this year 17% of customers said they would not complain because they feared being penalised. Show that you value the time and effort customers put into their complaint. They’ll also feel reassured that it won’t be held against them. For instance: “Thanks again for getting in touch. We want our service to be spot on every time. But, when things don’t go to plan, your comments give us a valuable opportunity to make amends and stop the same thing happening again.”
9. Be sincere — for your apology to be effective, customers need to believe you mean what you say. Coming across as sincere is as much about the tone you use as the words. And, if you’re face-to-face, body language is vital too.
In the new research we reviewed, ‘acknowledging you were wrong’ and ‘offering to fix the problem’ were the parts of the apology that were most effective. Although the more elements (from 3–7 in our list) that were included, the more effective the apology became.
One final point. We often get asked whether saying sorry makes an organisation liable. In reply our legal beagle points to The Compensation Act of 2006: “An apology, an offer of treatment or other redress, shall not of itself amount to an admission of negligence or breach of statutory duty.” And he says that the question of liability is decided by whether there is a duty which has been breached and caused any detriment.
I met James two years ago when I first heard about Resolver. We thought it’d be interesting to get his thoughts on the current state of UK complaints handling. Here’s what consumers are telling him about the problems they face, the service saints and sinners as well as what you can do to make things better.
About Resolver Resolver’s goal is to help consumers get results by making complaining quick and straightforward. It’s independent, free and focused on improving consumer rights and satisfaction. This year it’ll help customers make around 1 million complaints to both public and private sector organisations.
Resolver also helps organisations that want to improve their complaint handling. It lists companies from House of Fraser to Travelodge as clients and later this year will begin handling all UK parking ticket complaints. Started just four years ago, Resolver’s been so successful that it’s now associated with Martin Lewis and Money Saving Expert.
Complaints satisfaction benchmark When customers make a complaint using Resolver they’re carefully profiled. Clients can then use this information to better understand what’s most likely to make a customer happy when resolving their complaint. After a complaint has been handled Resolver also measures customer satisfaction. This is used by clients to compare how satisfied their customers are with others in the same sector:
Top and bottom 3 organisations for complaints handling satisfaction. Source: Resolver satisfaction index March 2016.
If you’d like to find out where you are in Resolver’s complaints satisfaction index just drop us a line.
Top customer frustrations Research shows that for every complaint voiced there are two that go unspoken because customers actually fear making a complaint. James says the main problems customers have with their complaints — and the reason why so many remain unspoken and continue to cause discontent — are:
1. It takes too long to resolve them 2. They take too much effort 3. They’re not handled effectively
5 things that’ll improve your complaints handling When it comes to what you can do to improve, here’s what James suggests:
Make it quick and easy — a lot of unhappy customers don’t bother complaining because they fear the process. Make it easy for your customers to complain. And if they do, handle them quickly, effectively and keep the number of ’touches’ to a minimum.
Recognise the value — organisations can see complaints as costs, or lost customers that can’t be retained. But customers that have had their complaints resolved successfully remain loyal for longer and become advocates that are more likely to tell others. Also you won’t have to risk a social media sensationdamaging your hard earned reputation.
Let customers complain how they want — All interactions must be documented but let customers complain how they want to, whether that’s by phone, email or social media. And, try to find out how they’d like you to get back to them.
Let advisors make decisions — Cost fears mean that some organisations want a manager involved even if an offer of recompense is small. This can slow the process down and means that advisors armed with all the information they need to make decisions can’t do so.
Communicate better — Set customers’ expectations by letting them know their rights, what the complaints process is and how long it’ll take. Acknowledge every customer complaint or response and when you do speak or write to them be clear, concise and empathetic.
