Kick-Ass Customer Service

Self-service offers companies a tantalizing opportunity to reduce spending, often drastically. All this creates a new challenge: As customers handle more of the simple issues themselves, frontline service reps get increasingly tough ones -- the issues customers can't solve on their own. And today's reps are struggling with these complex problems. Compounding the issue, as companies have focused on new self-service technologies, they've underinvested in frontline service talent. While the self-service experience has improved dramatically in recent years, the live service interaction has barely changed in decades, creating a gap between customers' expectations and actual experience. Tales of poor service provoke outrage on social media and go viral despite companies' best efforts to contain them. Not surprisingly, customer satisfaction has been in steady decline across industries for years. What's more, putting unprepared staff on the phone with irate customers is expensive. Not only does higher turnover increase recruitment and training costs, but it also forces companies to pay more to retain the reps they have, lest valuable knowledge and experience walk out the door. In a world of self-service, talented reps matter more than ever.