More isn’t always better in customer service and the customer experience. Yet I spend much of my time as a customer experience and customer service consultant reining in clients who don 't understand that adding new touchpoints to the customer service experience can diminish the experience rather than improve it, if the new touchpoints are added thoughtlessly or are executed in a glitchy or tone deaf manner.
This is a timely and urgent issue, as it’s become tantalizingly easy to add extraneous touchpoints to your customer service experience: to send, for example, personalized (but not actually personal) text or email messages to “welcome” (i.e., waste the time of) a customer long before they come in to do business with you, to send them poorly thought-out surveys after they do business with you, to send them whiny reminders to guilt them for not filling out those surveys (“we still want to hear from you, Mr. Solomon!”), and so forth.
Last week, a hotel—an outpost of a famous boutique brand—sent me a text at 6 am in my time zone to tell me that my room was ready. Good to know, but come on! And then, a few minutes later, sent me a “personal” text addressed to “Ms. Solomon,” welcoming me to their hotel (I was still across the country, it was still 6 am-ish, my gender preference is still to be a Mr.)
At another hotel, I received, just as I got to my room, a text on my phone offering to help me, directly, with any needs I had. (“My name is Rosa [not her actual name]; please just text me if you need anything at all and it will be my pleasure to take care of it for you, Mr. Solomon.”) When, in fact, I did need something, and pronto (I had left my iPad in the room and was texting from the cab en route to the airport), I took my texty friend Rosa up on the offer, texting “her” to find out if they had found my device. Did Rosa text back “absolutely, let me check?” Nope. She texted back, and I quote, “You need to call Security.”
Or my beloved piano tuner, whose automated system sent me seven (7) reminders about my upcoming tuning before I gently alerted him that something had gone awry. No real harm here as I helped him catch the glitch, but It’s hard to count on your customers to alert you to touchpoints-gone-wild; better to test your systems yourself than to count on your customers do your QC.
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At least as often, added touchpoints of dubious value are delivered by humans rather than technology. In these human-delivered cases, the answer to the question of whether the touchpoint adds to or detracts from the customer experience depends in large part on the delivery. For example: Requiring your employees to ask “How are you”? of every customer who comes in to your shop is an added touchpoint. And it’s potentially a fine one, unless your employees ask it in a cursory manner and don’t listen for the answer.
Similarly, some businesses assume that they’re improving things for their customers by switching from a telephone auto-attendant to a human operator to answer their phones. And they’re absolutely right–theoretically. But if it’s a poorly chosen, poorly trained, entry-level employee who will now be answering the phone, they’re just adding mess rather than warmth.
Ditto, if you make your earnest phone-answering employees recite some ridiculous script before the caller can get a single word in. Applebee’s used to do this; I don’t recall the exact script but my (probably exaggerated) memory has it as being
Thanks for calling Applebee’s on <street name>, featuring carside service and bourbon grilled shrimp. My name is <employee first name>. How may I help you?
Of course, the delivery of such a silly and lengthy script devolved very quickly into a humorous contest between employees to see who could recite this the fastest and most unintelligibly. Which did nothing for the customers calling in.
The worst part of the TSA experience at, say, PHL (Philadelphia International Airport), has nothing to do with the TSA at all. It has to do with the “greeters” added before the TSA experience. These renta-deterrents are actually employed by the airlines to make sure that nobody sneaks into their premium lanes, but, though this is something that could be accomplished graciously, it is done in such a vicious, accusatory and unschooled way that it casts a pall on the rest of the airport security experience.
How this should work
Contrast the examples above with touchpoints that work the way that they really should:
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• Zappos, in spite of its best-in-class website, invites customers to call them on the phone–although, most of the time, customers don’t; according to Tony Hsieh, only 5% of Zappos customers ever make a purchase via the telephone. When customers do call in, Zappos makes a point of making the most of that time on the phone. Hsieh’s theory is that almost every Zappos customer will call on the phone for something or other once in the course of their life as a customer. And if Zappos can make the most of that single call, that single chance to connect, it will make all the difference from there forward.
• Having a bellman to assist arriving guests at a hotel may seem superfluous in this age of rolling luggage. But not if that bellman is Christopher Johnson, a young employee at the gorgeous Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in
• The Warby Parker front-of-store greeters (“anchors” in Warbyspeak) are so good that they deserve an article of their own [and they get one here]. Having a greeter in a retail story is an expensive touchpoint to add, unless that greeter is so well-selected for the position and so well trained that they make a difference for customers and prospective customers who are making that potentially awkward transition from passing pedestrian to purchase. Which is the goal--and often the reality–in the case of Warby Parker.
Micah Solomon, recently named the "new guru of customer service excellence" by the Financial Post,
is a customer experience consultant, customer service consultant, consumer trends thought leader, keynote speaker, trainer, and bestselling author. Click here for two free chapters from Micah's latest book .
