We’ve had such an overwhelming response to our Customer Tipping Point Survey that we couldn’t include all the open ended answers in the survey results. Christina Tynan-Wood over at InfoWorld’s Grip Line blog has a couple of great posts (1, 2) on the topic as well. This topic seems to always touch a nerve with customers and the stories are plentiful.
So we’ve decided to start a weekly column about customer frustrations called ‘Frustration Fridays: Customer Tipping Point Stories’ where we’ll feature some of the best (and usually colorful) stories and try to find some customer experience takeaways. These are all real, unedited stories submitted through surveys, comments, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Company names were withheld.
Let’s get started:
I once spent 5, yes 5, hours on the telephone because I was being billed $200 for a service I didn’t receive. Eventually, I ended up in the company’s fraud department where the rep basically intimated that I was a liar!!! Even though the services were rendered to someone in So Carolina and I have lived in Vermont for 10 years. I badmouth them at every chance – including an expose on facebook!
Customer Experience Takeaway: Listen to your customers and don’t call them liars! It’s fairly straight forward, but these things happen all the time. If someone calls you and says they live in Vermont and not South Carolina, that’s pretty easy to verify. Check your CRM systems and see what address you’ve been sending bills to. Ask for copies of a local utility bill. Request a copy of the customer’s driver’s license. It’s not hard. Especially if a customer takes 5 hours out of their day to try to resolve a $200 issue. Our survey shows that almost 21% of customers will take to their social networks to spread bad experiences to their communities.
I received a new credit card from [company] as mine was about to expire. I activated it as requested and used it once before it stopped being accepted anywhere. So I called and they “reactivated” it while I was on the phone. Long story short, it continued to not work and I had to keep calling [company] and explaining the story to a new person each time. There was no history on this at all and it was so frustrating having to explain the situation each time. On my fourth and final call I finally told them if it stopped working one more time I was cutting it up and closing my account. I haven’t had any problems since…but oddly just a few days ago I received yet another replacement card in the mail (same account number) and I have not had the energy to call them about it and go through this one more time so I think I will cut it up.
Customer Experience Takeaway: Use your CRM system for the reason it was purchased and installed in the first place! Companies spend a lot of resources purchasing, designing and implementing complex ERP and CRM systems, but yet we hear stories like this all the time. In fact, our survey results show that 41% listed ‘Having to speak with multiple agents and having to start over ever time’ as the experience that frustrates them the most. What’s especially puzzling is that this is such an easy issue to fix. Simply follow contact center best practices, make sure your agents actually fill out case tickets with the relevant information and read case history at the beginning of each call. It’s really that simple.
I had my home phone service with [company]. After moving, I wanted to use [company] at my new residence, so transferred my Service. In transferring, they only opened my new Service and did not close my Service at my old residence. After being billed for a weeks worth of Service at my old residence (and mistakenly paying the bill), I realized what had happened and contacted [company] to resolve. One month later I got billed again for this service at my former residence. Apparently the new residents were using the phone and I was getting billed. I did not pay this bill and again called [company]. And, I asked again for reimbursement on what I had mistakenly paid (about $150). They refused reimbursement and demanded I pay for the most recent charges. I escalated this conversation with their manager(s), but got nowhere. At the end, I gave up on my reimbursement, canceled my service with [company] at my new residence, and held a grudge (I have no other grudges with any other person or company, so this is out of character). The grudge was simple … I was committed to making sure I told this story to as many people as possible, painting [company] out as a company you should not trust, that literally ‘steals’ your money and will take no responsibility for their mistakes. I thank you for the opportunity to tell you this story 
… now, close to 10 years later I estimate I have shared this story with hundreds of people if not thousands.
Customer Experience Takeaway: Own up to your mistakes! This loyal customer decided to keep his service after a move and this is how he was treated? Do you seriously think he wanted to pay for service at two locations? This issue could have been easily resolved without service cancellation and a grudge being held. Phone companies are the second most frustrating to work with according to our survey results, with cable companies holding the top spot. As in the above frustrating experience, we found that 54% of customers will ask for a manager or supervisor, 52% will tell everyone they know about it and 40% will cease doing business with the company. All this over not owning up to your mistakes? Shame!
I walked into a [company] store – I was greeted by a “greeter” who took my name and told me to wait for someone to become available in the store, he then greeted the next customer in the door with the same message. there were 2 sales people helping one customer who was complaining, we waited with no success to get to an agent. we ended up calling the 800 number, the agent offered us a phone however in the end the phone did not meet the needs we had, it took several visits to the store and calls into the center to finally get a phone that could handle 500+ contacts. in the end it cost me more however the entire process was excruciating.
Customer Experience Takeaway: Stop using separate informational silos and start understanding the customer experience from the customer point of view. This is usually easier said than done, but in order to win customers over and improve their daily experiences you must make the organizational changes and start seeing yourself through their eyes. This single experience was comprised of multiple retail and phone interactions and unfortunately many companies still see these as individual transactions rather than one complete experience.
That’s it for our first edition of Frustration Fridays. We’ll keep the stories coming and hope you participate by adding your comments and stories. If you have a twitter account, write your #FrustrationFridays story there and we’ll add it in a future post. Have a great weekend!
Summer is a usually the time when horror movies hit the theaters. With #FrustrationFridays, a weekly 
