Monday, November 20, 2006
gethuman final exams
Today the gethuman team releases our first report card on the gethuman 500, rating each of the most commonly called 500 organizations on customer service telephone systems.
The gethuman standard specifies how customer service phone systems should work. This standard was developed over the past few months, with input from thousands of consumers.
Sadly, only a handful of organizations have achieved an "A" grade as of today. :( There is much work to be done...
Consumers, if customer service is important to you, please be sure to reward companies with a good grade, and to let poor performing companies know that you will discontinue their service if they do not improve.
Questions about the new grading system? Contact us. posted by Paul English at 9:52 PM
The gethuman standard specifies how customer service phone systems should work. This standard was developed over the past few months, with input from thousands of consumers.
Sadly, only a handful of organizations have achieved an "A" grade as of today. :( There is much work to be done...
Consumers, if customer service is important to you, please be sure to reward companies with a good grade, and to let poor performing companies know that you will discontinue their service if they do not improve.
Questions about the new grading system? Contact us. posted by Paul English at 9:52 PM
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Avoiding draconian inbound regulation:
During the last 20 year,the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has implemented a number of rules that regulate the outbound calling area. These regulations were strongly opposed by the folks that were doing the outbound calling. They whined like stuck pigs, claiming that these regulations would destroy the industry and cause millions of jobs to be lost. All of this effort was a huge waste of time. The FTC listened to the complaints of the consumers, the proposed regulations prevailed and life went on.
We now are witnessing the first legislation that is addressing the consumer complaints that have been building against inbound calling. It is just a matter of time before we see Federal rule-making by the FTC that supports inbound calling laws.
If legislation is inevitable, would it not make sense to attempt to achieve laws that are reasonable to implement and yet address the complaints of the callers/consumers? This would seem to be a much more appropriate approach than to simply fight the regulations (and end up losing anyway).
The only way to avoid onerous and draconian inbound regulation is to put together regulations/standards that eliminate the irritation that callers are experiencing on inbound calls. Just what are the things that irritate callers the most. Most of the really serious caller irritants have to do with the IVR system.
Following are the ten items that consumers want the most and not providing them is a major irritant:
1. Don't make it difficult to connect to a human.
2. Don't disconnect on errors-- connect to a human.
3. Provide humans that I can understand and that don't have heavy accents.
4. Don't waste my time and confuse me with verbose prompts.
5. Do not advertise to me.
6. If I have to wait in a queue for a human, tell me what the wait time will be.
7. If I provide information to the IVR, don't ask me to repeat it to the human.
8. Don't attempt to entertain me with a persona.
9. Ask me occasionally what I think of your service.
10. Provide the option to call me back.
The graph shown above summarizes the results of a survey that gethuman did in September, 2006 of approximately 4,500 consumers. Some of the items are more in demand than others. It needs to be recognized, though, that even the least in demand item had over 90% of the consumers wanting it. None of these are unreasonable demands. Many of them are trivial to implement. Providing them will lead to consumers that find self-service easy to use and providing a quick-and-easy experience. If the FTC is guided by feedback from consumers, then it should be apparent what the inbound regulations will look like. posted by Walt Tetschner at 2:15 PM
We now are witnessing the first legislation that is addressing the consumer complaints that have been building against inbound calling. It is just a matter of time before we see Federal rule-making by the FTC that supports inbound calling laws.
If legislation is inevitable, would it not make sense to attempt to achieve laws that are reasonable to implement and yet address the complaints of the callers/consumers? This would seem to be a much more appropriate approach than to simply fight the regulations (and end up losing anyway).
The only way to avoid onerous and draconian inbound regulation is to put together regulations/standards that eliminate the irritation that callers are experiencing on inbound calls. Just what are the things that irritate callers the most. Most of the really serious caller irritants have to do with the IVR system.
Following are the ten items that consumers want the most and not providing them is a major irritant:
1. Don't make it difficult to connect to a human.
2. Don't disconnect on errors-- connect to a human.
3. Provide humans that I can understand and that don't have heavy accents.
4. Don't waste my time and confuse me with verbose prompts.
5. Do not advertise to me.
6. If I have to wait in a queue for a human, tell me what the wait time will be.
7. If I provide information to the IVR, don't ask me to repeat it to the human.
8. Don't attempt to entertain me with a persona.
9. Ask me occasionally what I think of your service.
10. Provide the option to call me back.
The graph shown above summarizes the results of a survey that gethuman did in September, 2006 of approximately 4,500 consumers. Some of the items are more in demand than others. It needs to be recognized, though, that even the least in demand item had over 90% of the consumers wanting it. None of these are unreasonable demands. Many of them are trivial to implement. Providing them will lead to consumers that find self-service easy to use and providing a quick-and-easy experience. If the FTC is guided by feedback from consumers, then it should be apparent what the inbound regulations will look like. posted by Walt Tetschner at 2:15 PM
