The top complaints customers have on their experience with call centers

Here are the top 4 complaints consumers have about dealing with contact centers:

1. Waiting in a call queue

It’s more frustrating than waiting in a physical queue because you’re stuck listening to random music with little knowledge of what’s going to happen at the end.

2. Bad IVR or automation

Everybody hates going around in circles with some automation that isn’t doing what you need.

But automation is important because, without it, you might never get to an agent.

3. Futile agent interaction

Most contact centers don’t have the ability to provide active guidance to agents that could enable them to answer customer questions quickly.

4. Broken promises

The moment someone contacts you, you make a lot of implicit promises to them (e.g., solving their problem, delivering on time, etc.) that you’re supposed to keep.

But it’s even more frustrating if you make a promise (like saying you’ll call back) and break it.

It’s worse than never making the promise at all.

Ironically, to solve the first 3 problems, you have to make more promises.

The CX leaders that I know track their promises.

It enables them to:
– communicate effectively with the customer if they fail to keep a promise
– know why they weren’t able to keep their promises and try to fix it