500 Companies Graded for Support in Customer Opinion

The gethuman movement has scored the enterprises that are in the gethuman 500 database against the gethuman standard, which specifies how customer service phone systems should work. Each of the 10 standards was worth 10 points and a school scoring scheme was used (A = 90+, B = 80 to 90, C =70 to 80, D = 60 to 70, and F = below 60). A summary of the test results for the 500 enterprises is:

Grade - % of total
A - 1.80%
B - 4.01%
C - 3.81%
D - 6.01%
F - 84.37%

Less than 2% received an A score and a whopping 84.4% received an F. If any doubt existed re: how poorly telephone self-service is implemented, these scores put it to rest. A further analysis reveals that it is actually worse than it looks. The A and B scores are dominated by call centers that are direct to an agent and that do not deploy self-service. Catalog companies and hotels were strongly represented. The call centers here handle mostly sales transactions. They have adequate agents available at all times since they recognze that their revenue will decline if they do not. When you add an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR), the scores deteriorate, simply because they are implemented so badly. Callers often have to repeat things when they talk to a human. For most of the self-service, the prompts are verbose and waste the caller’s time. Wait times are usually not provided to the caller. Callback is very rarely offered as an option to the callers in order that they don’t have to waste their time waiting in a queue. Incredibly, a number of these enterprises shut down after business hours and don’t even bother to get the caller’s phone number or let them leave a voice mail. Message is: “if you really want to do business with us badly enough, then you need to call us back when it is convenient for us.” Incredible arrogance! This situation seems like an incredible opportunity. These companies are antagonizing their customers. They aren’t even aware of it and sure do not want to do this. We know what needs to be done to fix this. The solution seems pretty straightforward:
1) you educate the enterprises about how much they are irritating their callers;
2) you tell them what they are doing wrong; and
3) you propose a solution that fixes it

Check out this neat article in the Washington Post: Get a Human, Get an A. Get a Machine, Get an F.

Posted by gethuman on Mon, 8 Jan 2007 7:51am