Customer Experience Leaders: Are You Leading Cattle Call?
by Kate Nasser | Comments Off on Customer Experience Leaders: Are You Leading Cattle Call?
Customer experience leaders — customer experience even in large volume is about the ultimate positive moment for each customer. Even in the face of high volume delivery challenges, super customer experience is about individual customer satisfaction and success.
When you believe and act as if customer experience is mostly about the collective picture, the individual customers become nameless and faceless. The customers feel like they’re in a cattle call — to borrow an expression from the theatre world!
Customer Experience Leaders: Are You Leading Cattle Call? Image by: itselea
Customer Experience Leaders: Are You Leading a Cattle Call?
Here are true customer stories of the cattle call effect and an easy fix for each!
From Nameless to Human
When Alex received her flood insurance renewal notice, it arrived with a confusing letter about rate increases. She called for clarification, gave her name and how long she had been a customer. The insurance rep replied: “Ma’am there have been rate increases ….and so ma’am there’s nothing we can do.”
Alex replied, “I mentioned my name is Alex. I’ve been your customer for 15 years. Will you please use my name and treat me as your customer? And by the way I am not debating the rate increase I am just asking for clarification.”
Cattle call effect: High.
Customer experience score: Low.
Easy Fix: Address customers by name!
From Narcissism to Customer Focus
When the mortgage company holding Pat’s mortgage was bought out by a larger one, Pat received notice of the change. A mortgage payment was coming due and he had a question about where to send the payment. When Pat called, the rep repeatedly mentioned paying online or using a credit card over the phone.
Pat mentioned that he prefers to pay by check and just needs the address. The rep again mentioned online payment or credit card. Pat became annoyed and said: “I pay my own way — by check. Do you have an option to receive payment by check? Else I will move my mortgage even if it means refinancing through another company.” Rep then gave Pat the address to pay by check.
In this example, the mortgage company wanted Pat to do what was good for them not him.
Cattle call effect: High.
Customer experience score: Low.
Easy Fix: If you have different payment options, offer them for the customer’s choice and satisfaction. Company narcissism is not a success strategy for customer experience!
From Input to Output
Every year Sally goes to the same mammography center for her yearly mammogram. She is an educated health care consumer and always keeps copies of her test results for her records. She returned for her yearly mammogram and once again asked for copies of her films. The technician replied: “We’ve gone digital and everything is stored on the system now.”
Sally replied: “I would like copies for my records. Is it possible?” The technician replied, “Yes it’s possible but why would you want that? We store them on the system. Are you going to a breast specialist ….blah blah blah.”
Annoyed, Sally replied again: “I like to keep copies for my records. When can I have the films?” The technician finally told her that they would prepare them and call her w/i one week for pickup.
Cattle call effect: High.
Customer experience score: Low.
Easy Fix: Listen to the customer’s request and respond from there. In this case the technician was thinking not from the customer input but from their standard process. Better to go from customer input to output than from standard process to a cattle call response.
Large organizations do not have to deliver impersonal cattle call customer experience. Brands have proven for years that they can win the hearts and loyalty of their customers when they focus on the customers.
Customer Experience Leaders: Don’t Lead a Cattle Call! Image by:Arse_shoots.
Customer Experience: Each Customer Is Unique! Image by:SeanbJack
Image of cattle call by Arse_Shoots via Flickr Creative Commons License.
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™
Other helpful customer experience posts:
Super Customer Experience: Like a Shiny New Car!
Customer Experience: Loyalty Through Narcissism?
Customer Experience: People Skills for Profitable Connection
©2013 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.