Customer Service, an element that is getting more and more attention these days. Local industries in various sectors are attempting to strengthen the mythos of Customer Experience.
To embrace and implement programs to introduce change among the file and ranks. However, this seems a bigger job than expected. It seems this is a concept, although practised and as natural as rice in Aisan culture and daily life, its introduction into the workplace seems a mission impossible.
Customer Service, already rare in the public domain, suffers most among the armies of “K-Economy ready” technical support help desk technicians. Attempting to understand the mind of a Technical Support Technician/Engineer is like going through your local pharmacy looking for that perfect virus-preventing face mask or the ever-elusive hand sanitizer.
Your typical Technical Support Professional, a result of an educational system that bombards him/her with information, materials and schematics that isn’t balanced with the more important humanistic traits and people skills to succeed in the service industry. The results are marble statues en masse that move and eat like you or I but have low or no understanding of delighting someone nor possess the aptitude for empathy. However, present them with a computer that doesn’t work, and their eyes will light up as if reunited with a long-lost lover seeking rekindling.
Pair your typical Technician/Engineer with a desperate user who has a promotion threatening deadline and an ailing computer between them; the result would likely be disastrous. A disaster for your company, your product and probably any potential future business from this particular customer, his friends, relatives and followers on Twitch. According to studies, the average disgruntled or unhappy customer would most likely share bad experiences with 8 – 16 others. 10% or more tell 20 others, and 91% of this unsatisfied lot will never purchase again.
A quick mental calculation will illustrate how this negativity will grow exponentially and prove fatal to your business. Unconvinced? When was the last time you shared with more than five people how good the service from the frontline staff was in your local franchised fried chicken restaurant? How many people have you complained to about how this same franchise restaurant staff was irrevocable on his or her stand without an acceptable explanation of why they cannot serve you a mix of regular and crispy recipes in an order? Alas, the classic state of Asian business mentality when it comes to formulating policy and procedure. Not much if any consideration is allocated to customer satisfaction, the most crucial element of Customer Experience.
Now, how does this fit into the paradoxical relationship between technical support engineers at contact centre help desks and desk side customer service?
Communications over the phone suffer from the elimination of body language as a communication tool.
This equates to the removal of approximately 55% of your communication effectiveness. With purely auditory communication, body language is unavailable. This paradox is made clear even with body language; a typical purely technical person from my experience is ineffective in communicating, let alone expected to exhibit customer pleasing qualities.
When was the last time you received good customer service from your company IT support person? Are you not a customer? Albeit an internal one. Put them behind the phone, and you can imagine the nightmare your customers face.
Technical Support Technicians/Engineers at contact center help desks have long suffered this lack of attention to honing their customer service abilities by top management. Introducing customer service skills to these individuals via an effective training program specially designed for technical support professionals working at help desks is vital. A program specially tailored to approach the purely logical mind of an engineer.
To gently introduce and instil the importance of the utterly alien concept of customer service to these “Mr. Spocks” of call centers, the objective is to gently raise and instil the importance of the utterly foreign idea of customer service. To cultivate an understanding of good customer service and how, if wielded effectively, could be invaluable to your company and for them as individuals in their personal life. Hit us up for how to humanize your Technical Support Professional, we are standing by…
