A new customer service report has found New Zealanders collectively spent 24 million hours on hold last year. Photo: 123RF
A new customer service report has found New Zealanders collectively spent 24 million hours on hold last year.
The report's author ServiceNow and its New Zealand manager Kate Tulp told Checkpoint that customers are dealing with old technology and an old way of thinking.
"Businesses think that it takes about 30 minutes on average to resolve customer complaints or problems. But in our research, customers are reporting that's taking over four-and-a-half days to get problems resolved."
"I think there is a big disconnect between what businesses think is the time to resolution and settling and what customers are telling us that they're experiencing."
She said the best performers are within the transport space, such as bus, rail and ride-share businesses.
"The most improved award is going to household utilities. Gas and electricity companies."
The worst offenders were those in financial services, such as banks and insurance. As well as government, with wait time increasing 30 minutes year-on-year.
"The research that we produced, it was just the customers were telling us who they think they stay on hold for the longest."
"When you look at the technology that's being invested in by some of these segments, you can see the performance and the customer experience that they are able to provide with better technology and the investments over the last few years."
New Zealanders' expectations have lifted in regards to good customer services, she said.
"Unfortunately we aren't seeing the improvement out of our businesses and government agencies to match that. The expectations are definitely lifting, we've just got to move a lot faster to deliver against them."
She said four out of five customer service people do not have their entire organisational view of a customer sitting in front of them.
"We know that because when we're on the phone, they put you back on hold, they need to go and ask somebody else for something. They need to talk to a supervisor."
"That's causing a lot of problems as well. There's big gap between the technology that we've given these amazing people and what our expectations as a customer are."
The happiest way that people can get service as a customer is if they engage with the digital means that a company has, she said.
"A chat bot or a website or an e-mail or an app that the business might have. If you're engaging in those digital channels, you're going to be a bit happier and you're certainly going to get a faster result."
"You can also go off and do other things at the same time, so you're not listening to hold music you didn't get to choose."
She said sending an email and waiting to hear back may take longer, but a person can continue with their life.
"You actually have to get on with work or looking after the kids or whatever you're busy with, but you're not sitting there on hold, listening to the music."
AI can play an effective role in customer service, she said.
"A really great example of some work that we've done with Southern Cross insurance is they've using and they've deployed an AI powered agent for their internal users."
"That's helping resolve employee requests 24/7 with a 99 percent satisfaction rating."
She said AI can be used to bring together the disparate systems that live inside of businesses.
"We're not saying AI replaces people here. If you've told the AI agent to be able to process results, you can choose to put in a little moment where a human checks it and says yes, that's appropriate."
"But that's what happens when you're on the phone with the call centre too. They go off and check with their supervisor and come back. It's the same thing, it's just that we're using technology smarter."
