“ People who claim cost savings in a company often do not take responsibility for the lost value in business and opportunity costs. — Rory Sutherland - Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK.”
- Introduction
- Companies Exist to Create Value
- We Pretend that AI is As Good as Humans
- Anything Predictable is Also Hackable
- Behavioral Science, Not AI Will Help to Succeed in Customer Service
- Customer Service Exists to Manage Sentiment
- Behavioral Science Feels Like "Cheating"
- Economic Downturn: Lower the value of a customer or try to claim more customers
- Customer Attention is Getting Expensive
- How to ROI Customer Service
- Customer Service Reps should not be "Commodity"
Introduction
Cost cutting is the magic phrase these days when companies get to the tail of of their innovative cycle and struggle to create value. Here are a few points I would like to remind all of us who want to use customer service to create value for business.
Companies Exist to Create Value
Companies and public services do exist to create value for target customers. When you take away some features of the service you offer, you reduce the value of the service. But this is often not taken into consideration because either it is difficult to measure the lost value or easily hidden by using some subjective data tricks.
We Pretend that AI is As Good as Humans
Many people in technology these days pretend that AI is as good as humans or at least it will be in the near future. When it is not, we make AI to solve complex equations to prove its value. It then becomes nothing more than a scientific calculator. What we are signaling is that, this time cost savings will not be like "cutting the corners". But in reality, it is.
Anything Predictable is Also Hackable
AI is predictable; it is based on historical data. When it is used in human communications, it is also hackable. Customers get frustrated when AI can not perform and easily find ways to bypass it.
Behavioral Science, Not AI Will Help to Succeed in Customer Service
As long as your customers are humans, behavioral science will take precedence; customers are not logical, but their illogical behaviour is predictable, thanks to behavioral psychology patterns we have been discovering since the beginning of the last century.
Customer Service Exists to Manage Sentiment
Primary goal of customer service is to manage the customer sentiment. If you solved their problem but they are still frustrated, that is not good. Managing the sentiment helps to feel customers better even the product or the service has failed. And talking is the best way to manage the sentiment. That's why we have "call centers" not "email centers".
Behavioral Science Feels Like "Cheating"
Instead of spending billions of dollars to make trains or planes go faster, you can spend a fraction of this for a better Wifi. So people can have a good time and work if they need to. Or instead of making lifts faster, you can put a mirror so people will not be bored during the journey.
This feels like cheating to me, someone with engineering background. But it works. We need to train our minds that "it is OK to cheat" using behavioral psychology.
Economic Downturn: Lower the value of a customer or try to claim more customers
During economic downturn, lifetime value of a customer goes down on the paper. Then you have two options; either reduce the budget to match the lower lifetime value of your customers or use customer service to win more customers and increase retention. The second option automatically gives you higher valuation when the new economic cycle begins and the lifetie value of the customer starts to increase again.
Customer Attention is Getting Expensive
While many of us are boasting about the AI cost savings, getting the customer attention is becoming more difficult, and "expensive". After all that effort of grabbing customer's attention, if you lose it by using some AI feature to claim some cost savings, then you will create the downward spiral for the value of your business.
How to ROI Customer Service
We also need to change the way we look at the return of investment in customer service. Asking for an ROI of a call center wallboard does not make sense; return on investment needs to be looked at for the entire customer service operations and for a long term. Even in that case, you may not quantify the benefits. What is the ROI of a seatbelt in your car in USD ?
Customer Service Reps should not be "Commodity"
Today, being a customer service agent is not even as valuable as "flipping burgers in a fast food joint" as career prospect. Even those guys differentiated themselves with their lumberjack shirts and black rubber gloves to make their burgers feel you more "artisanal". A customer service rep with ten years experience gets pretty much the same salary as a new starter. These cost cutting gurus assume all the reps are the same, script what they can and can not say. That makes managing customer sentiment more and more difficult and reduces the customer service value to the lowest possible level.
We are working on a marketplace that customer service reps can claim their past experience, positive customer scores and other success and make more money by offering a better service. Businesses can choose the reps for their different budget options; more experienced agents for high value customers and less experienced ones for the customers with less lifetime value. Companies will not need to "commit" to a single outsource agency or a BPO. They can bring up a team from different BPOs. As long as they are incentivized, customer service reps from different BPOs can work together for the common goal. And use this skill to increase their value in the marketplace even more. Reach out to us to learn more about NoTime, our new Customer Service Marketplace.