If You Can Be an Option, Don’t Play With Genuine Human Connection!
Have you ever walked into a bank for a complaint and the customer service rep attends to you well and tells you to go home that it has been resolved and that was enough for you?
Lol. For some of us, we are not leaving that facility until we ask for a number. Like “Can I get your number? so that I can call if something happens”.
December last year, I walked into a mall in Ibadan and the Airtel adverts/experience rang so much in my head that I walked to a mobile store to get my Mifi. One of the things that gave me a bit of confidence was that the guy said “My number is on this flyer. Kindly call if you have any issue”. Yes, I had some issues setting up the account and I eventually had to call him to resolve it. It was resolved.
It is becoming increasingly important for customer-interfacing brands to create genuine/accessible connections with their target audience. More and more, the number of options available and the noise people have to scan through to reach you means that you should be more intentional about making their time worth the while.
Return customers tend to buy more from a company over time. As they do, your operating costs to serve them decline. What’s more, return customers refer others to your company. And they’ll often pay a premium to continue to do business with you rather than switch to a competitor with whom they’re neither familiar nor comfortable.” ~Fred Reichheld, Creator of Net Promoter
It can be as simple as someone on the other side of the line when we call to make inquiries.
Those automated calls can be boring, I mean, we wait for a long time on our credit (phone bills) and sometimes it ends with, “We do not have a representative available to talk with you. Really? After wasting my time?
I mean, it can be a prompt response to that email, text, tweet or DM.
That little time in between crisis can be the most frustrating ever because assumptions could even be made that makes your work more difficult as a representative.
It could even get worse! Anger, excitement, emotional distress and in seconds, you could be dealing with a viral brand crisis.
“When customers share their story, they’re not just sharing pain points. They’re actually teaching you how to make your product, service, and business better. Your customer service organization should be designed to effectively communicate those issues.” — Kristin Smaby, “Being Human is Good Business”.
If you are very conversant with the fintech space on Social Media, Feranmi has been able to hack this experience a bit that sometime in 2019, someone tweeted that if you shout Cowrywise three times in front of a mirror, @A_Feranmi will appear.
Lol. This was more about the speed with which he responded to complaints and his readiness to always engage with issues that border around the brand he represents than an esoteric mode of communication.
More and more, brands need to have people that their customers can reach in a time of joy, trouble, crisis, complaints etc.
If you assume that technology has taken the place of human connection, especially in markets like what we have in Sub-Saharan Africa, continue to pray that your product revolves around a must-have that people do not have an option than to buy you. This is because, the more options we have to choose from, the more brand experience becomes a major deciding factor on maybe we buy or not, especially when the price points are similar.
