How You’re Pissing Off Your Customers Without Even Trying

It’s 2 am when I wake up and I hear nothing. 

Normally, at 2 am, hearing nothing would be ideal. 

It’s not a scene out of a horror movie when hearing nothing means there’s a bad man hiding in your house. But it’s the hottest night of the year so far and I don’t hear anything. I don’t hear the fridge humming, or the ice machine tumbling. I don’t hear my fan softly whirling above. And I certainly don’t hear the cool air flowing through my A/C ducts. 

I think to myself, “I lost my *bleeping* power”. 

I peel the sheet back off my sticky, sweaty body and try to make sense of what happened. There’s no storm, so I chalk the outage up to a transformer blowing down the line somewhere. That tends to happen in the summertime. 

I reach for my cellphone to try and call the power company to see if they’ll be out soon, but after 6 rings, there’s no answer. I get a cool glass of water and try to fall back asleep, but the stillness of the air is unbearable. 

After an hour, I try calling again. Surely someone will answer. What if this was an emergency? What if a powerline was down over a car filled with cute puppies!? Surely the power company wouldn’t risk letting that wait until morning…. right?

Ring…ring…ring… no answer. I turn to my next reliable source of customer service, Twitter. I feverishly type out my sweaty cry for help, fitting in my distress in the 280 allotted characters. Tweet…. And now we wait… 

With each minute that passes, I grow more and more frustrated (and hot). 

After another hour, I’m not just frustrated. I’m downright pissed. They’re a HUGE power supply company that takes way too much of my money. They should have customer service reps on call any time of day. 

I try calling again, this time leaving a message. But that doesn’t change my state of mind. I want to scream, “Hey power company! Stop pissing off your customers by not being available!” 

Customers Need Answers, Now

We live in an age of instant gratification. When customers have questions, they exhaust their options to find the answer. Sometimes their only option is to ask the business directly. But customers don’t want to wait longer than a few minutes for an answer. Depending on the channel customers use to reach out, the tolerated wait time is even shorter. 

This is where your customer service channels need to shine. Customers will only tolerate so much before they leave for one of your competitors. 

At the bottom of the waiting list, we have call centers. Almost 60% of customers will hang up after just one minute on hold with a call center. What about voicemails? Many small businesses don’t have the resources for huge call center outsourcing so they rely on voicemails from missed customer inquiries. According to one of the leading phone support companies, customers will tolerate waiting 15 minutes to 1 hour for their call to be returned. 

Emails, on the other hand, give you a little more time to respond. On average, customers expect a reply to their email inquiries within 12 hours of sending them. 

Social media is a newer method for offering customer service. Depending on the social platform, customers expect a response within the day, if not a few hours. 

But we’re living in 2020 people! We have to come up with a better way to offer our customers more immediate customer support. 

Pissed Off Customers Attack

We understand that customer service isn’t always easy. Nothing of value ever comes easy. Customer service is extremely valuable. 

It’s why customers get so mad at companies who aren’t providing good customer support, 24/7. 

What it really comes down to customer empowerment. According to Rishi Dave, Dell’s Executive Director of Global Marketing, by the time the customer is reaching out to you, they’ve already been through at least 60% of the buyer’s journey. 

There are so many different resources at your customer’s fingertips. They have already identified their own problem, did the research, and now they’re working on the solution. But if you’re not answering their questions, what use are you to them? If they can’t find the answers they’re searching for, you’re taking away their power.

That’s when pissed off customers tend to snap. No response IS a response. If you can’t provide the service they’re seeking then you’re basically telling them you don’t care.

 “Sorry, it’s after 5 pm, our doors are closed. Be gone!” But that’s just not true, right? 

OF COURSE NOT!

Tricia Morris of customerTHINK lists the top 5 customer service mistakes that are pissing off your customers, i.e. when they’ll start to attack. 

1. Having to speak with multiple agents and starting over every time; 42% of all respondents say this is their most frustrating tipping point.
2. Being kept on hold for long periods of time.
3. Rude or inexperienced representatives or service technicians.
4. Not getting a resolution on the first try.
5. Not being understood by IVR/speech recognition applications.

These are all examples of poor customer service. Each one can be a major blow to how your business is viewed by potential customers coming in. 

According to American Express, one-third of consumers say they would consider switching companies after just one instance of bad customer service. Additionally, the majority of Americans have decided to not go through with a purchase because of a poor customer service experience. With all the possibilities stacked against you, your business can’t afford to be providing poor customer service. [nextiva]

Customer Support: Live Chat Edition 

Website visitors, qualified leads, new customers, and old customers should have access to some form of customer support around the clock. But vetting, hiring, and training all those additional employees takes time and money. There is an easier solution to your customer service problems that will save you on both. 

Two words: live chat. 

Live chat customer support is the answer to stop pissing off your customers. With live chat customer support, customers and website visitors alike can access your customer support team 24/7. They can exchange pictures and links to relevant products or service solutions, and their chat is documented for future reference. 

Live chat has become the leading digital contact method for online customers, as a staggering 46% of customers prefer live chat compared to just 29% for email, and 16% for social media. [ICIM]  Additionally, with live chat, customers only experience an average wait time of 2 minutes! 

How can you take your live chat customer service to the next level? By adding a rockstar support team. Support teams like Helpsquad, are highly trained to know your businesses. They can answer any questions customers may have. 

Stop pissing off your customers with crappy or NO customer service. 

Give them an option that is immediate, efficient, and more importantly, effective. 

With a 24/7 live chat customer support team, I wouldn’t be sweating through my sheets. I could notify the power company about the recent outage immediately. The maintenance team would be dispatched ASAP. I would finally be off to dreamland, fantasizing about cooler days and the power company would be pissing off less customers.