While touting their commitment to customer service, many companies have actually pared their customer service staffing recently and are now using artificial intelligence to assess how far they can stretch, yes stretch, their customers’ patience without loosing them. Some companies informally refer to this threshold as the “break point”.
From physical wait lines, to wait time on calls, to requests for escalations, these companies use software to measure how angry customers have to become before actually leaving them and then only “jump in” when the threat to lose the customers becomes imminent based on their algorithms.
Financial strain due to the current health crisis, increased competitive pressures, and the availability of such artificial intelligence software have led too many companies to adopt these new customer service avoidance methods. This, in turn, has contributed to a significant decline in the quality of our experiences with many our favorite vendors.
Customers understand that larger buyers get better service and better benefits sometimes – airlines have been open about their loyalty program perks for example, but they will not tolerate that adjustments to their experiences with their go-to vendors be done based on hidden measures of their frustration levels.
In the short term, customers might tolerate such experiences, for these happen too often these days, but they will gradually become less loyal to those vendors and more open to changing to new brands. Net Promoter Scores will likely drop for the old vendors, as customers stop recommending them to their friends and family.
Instead, we recommend that our client companies leverage the information provided by such new technologies to provide better, more personalized experiences to their customers, and stand out amongst competitors trying to “game” the system.
The right approach here will increase market share, improve customer loyalty, and grow repeat business; and, in the long run, companies that provide better service and transparency will continue to be rewarded.
Customer service is indeed an investment, an investment in your customers experience, an investment in the future of your company.