A few weeks ago, I read the book 'Delivering Happiness' by
Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos. Zappos was a pioneer in retailing footwear
online. It was acquired in 2009 by Amazon for ~USD 1.2 Billion.
Zappos had a manic focus on customer service. Every customer
call went to a service rep and the reps went to a great length to help the
customer get what they wanted. They even had an instance of a rep helping a
customer who called the Zappos number to order a pizza.
At the other extreme, there are organization with highly
complicated IVR menus that hide access to the agent behind multiple layers. They
do so presumably to save customer interaction costs. However, it significantly
deteriorates the experience for the customer who really needs to reach out to
an agent.
Most organizations would like to be in the middle of the customer care spectrum, so they could service the customer while meeting targets such as:
· Reduced cost per customer care interaction
· Scalability to handle higher volume of customer interactions
· Reduced average handling time
· Deflection of calls to digital channels (Chat Bot, Virtual assistant, Mobile apps etc)
· First contact resolution etc