Every year, I get a standard letter about a scheme I’m no longer part of. When the latest one arrived, I decided to phone the company to close the account, which would save them money and save both of us hassle. Unfortunately, my call went straight through to an automated answering system that didn’t recognise my reference number and refused to put me through to a human. And when I did finally get put through to the department that deals with account closures, all the lines were busy.

We live in a world where automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionised customer service, and when it works, it works well. When it doesn’t, though, we’re left with a sense of frustration that something as simple as closing an account and making our lives easier should turn out to be so difficult.

Don’t get me wrong, having options certainly isn’t a bad thing when it comes to customer service. Depending on our circumstances, we may prefer to talk to a human being or to use an automated system that enables us to self-serve quickly and efficiently without needing to speak to anyone. The important thing for whatever route we decide is that it works – and, principally, that it works for the user.

This is borne out by data from Salesforce, who found that 80% of customers say the customer service a company provides is just as important as the products and services it sells. More interestingly, though, another survey revealed that 65% of customers state that they’ve changed to a different brand due to just one negative customer service experience.

This is why it is important to understand whether the experience your company is providing is working for the customer – and if it isn’t, to find out why and do something about it.

From a company’s perspective, the fact that most calls are answered by the AI system can look like a success; fewer calls need human intervention, and the operation looks more efficient. But from the caller’s side, the experience can be very different. If you don’t talk to your customers and ask how it went from their point of view, you’ll never find out. I wonder how my contact with the company that administers the scheme I was trying to close looked from their side? It probably didn’t even register.

There is a lesson here for all of us. If you aren’t listening to your customers when you can, and as closely as you can, the chances are that you’ll end up with a flawed idea of how satisfied they are. Feedback, particularly from people who’ve encountered issues or problems, can be incredibly valuable, especially in a world where companies are trying to strike a good balance between automated solutions and human expertise.

Many people will be happy to deal with an automated system – we use a lot of straight-through processing at Charles Taylor because it can help customers get where they want to go much faster. But we recognise that, at any point, people may need more than that.

The future of dealing with claims and resolving complaints doesn’t lie solely with AI; for me, there will always be a need for the human touch, combined and enhanced with smart technology. Ensuring that as few people as possible are left frustrated and worn out by the experience of contacting you is one of the most important priorities for any customer-facing business, and Charles Taylor is no exception.

We recently opened a new office for our travel and assistance business down in Portsmouth. We invited our largest customer, a big UK insurer, to officially open the office – but, just as importantly, to also spend time with our team and even to sit on some random, live customer calls to hear first-hand how we respond and deal with their claims. We wanted them to hear live conversations, which, taken in tandem with the formal NPS scores we track, provide for rounded, accurate and true feedback.

It was an amazing day for lots of reasons, but what that time spent on calls with our teams demonstrated to our customer was that we are a company that cares about their customers and claimants; that we understand that customer service without enough customer feedback is a dangerous mix, and we want to be as good as we can be and constantly improving. Because, in the end, how can a company be successful without happy customers?
 

Rob Brown
Group Chief Executive Officer