How to identify and address customer irritants
A customer irritant is any element or interaction that causes frustration or dissatisfaction for a customer during their purchasing journey. These irritants can occur at all stages, from initial research to after-sales service, and have a significant impact on brand image and customer loyalty.
However, providing the best possible experience is more essential than ever for retaining and engaging increasingly demanding consumers. That's why in this article, we will cover all the necessary keys to identifying and resolving the irritants in your customer journey.
The stakes of managing customer irritants
A study conducted by Accenture reveals that a poor customer experience is one of the main reasons why customers stop doing business with a company:
46% of customers switch providers after a bad experience.
47% immediately cease all relations with the company after a bad experience.
By analyzing the causes of these bad experiences in more detail, Accenture identified the three main sources of customer dissatisfaction as:
- Having to contact the company multiple times for the same reason (60%)
- Dealing with unpleasant or impolite employees (56%)
- Failure to honor promises made during the purchase (55%)
Failure to resolve these sources of frustration risks eroding the trust of your customers or potential customers. It is therefore crucial to implement solutions to quickly identify, analyze, and resolve customer irritants as part of a continuous improvement approach.
7 examples of customer irritants in customer service
1. Excessive waiting time
Customers hate waiting a long time to get an answer to their request or problem. Prolonged waiting times can lead to increased frustration and a negative perception of the company, pushing customers to look for alternatives.
To solve this problem, you can, for example, increase the number of agents available during peak hours, implement an automatic callback system to avoid waiting online, and use chatbots to handle simple requests and reduce the load on human agents.
2. Unresolved issues
When customer issues are not resolved quickly and efficiently, it can lead to significant dissatisfaction. Unresolved issues can result in a loss of trust and loyalty, and encourage customers to share their negative experiences.
Implement clear processes for rapid issue resolution and use tracking tools to ensure each issue is resolved satisfactorily.
3. Automated Responses
Customers may feel frustrated when they receive automated responses that do not address their specific questions. Inappropriate automated responses can give the impression that the company does not care about the individual needs of its customers, thereby decreasing their satisfaction.
One possible solution is to use advanced AI-based chatbots that are capable of understanding and responding to specific questions. However, ensure that a human agent takes over quickly if the chatbot cannot resolve an issue.
4. Lack of Product Knowledge
Customer service agents who are not knowledgeable about the products or services can irritate customers and tarnish your brand image. A lack of knowledge can lead to incorrect or incomplete responses, increasing frustration and reducing trust in the company.
Provide continuous and in-depth training to all your agents on the company's products and services, and provide them with easily accessible knowledge bases.
5. Multiple Transfers
Being transferred from service to service without getting an answer can be very frustrating for customers. Multiple transfers can lengthen resolution times and increase customer frustration, leading them to abandon the service or complain publicly.
Again, make sure to train your agents well so that they are able to resolve a wide range of issues. Give them access to a common knowledge base and use a CRM system to centralize customer information and communications to avoid unnecessary transfers.
6. Lack of Empathy
Customers want to feel understood and taken seriously; a lack of empathy can exacerbate their frustration. A lack of consideration for customer expectations can make them dissatisfied and less inclined to continue doing business with the company. Train your agents in active listening and empathy, and encourage them to personalize their interactions to show that they understand and care about customer concerns.
7. Lack of Follow-Up
Not following up after a customer service interaction can give the impression that the company does not care about its customers' satisfaction, which does not encourage them to remain loyal.
Implement systematic follow-up procedures after each customer service interaction. You can also automatically send customer satisfaction surveys to get feedback after each interaction and continuously improve your services.
Identify and manage customer irritants with Speech Analytics
In a world where customer experience has become a key differentiator, understanding and resolving customer irritants is essential for any business. However, traditional methods of improving customer experience in call centers are showing their limitations.
They do not always capture and quantify the full diversity of customer interactions, making it difficult to understand actual needs and implement effective action plans. In addition, traditional surveys such as NPS and CSAT often lack the detail to fully capture the causes and extent of customer dissatisfaction.
It is in this context that Speech Analytics, offered by companies like Batvoice AI, comes into play. This powerful tool allows you to analyze telephone conversations to identify points of friction. By better understanding the reasons for customer dissatisfaction or frustration, you can not only reduce the rate of customer call-backs, but also improve their overall satisfaction.
One of Batvoice's customers can testify to this:
“We reduced the rate of irritants per call by 19%, and mechanically we also reduced the number of calls by 17%. Overall, on my scale, that's €300,000 in savings. This allowed us to gain 1 conversion point, or €1.5 million.”
— Eric Poueys, Director of Customer Relations Europe at Groupe Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs
Here are three ways speech analytics can transform your customer irritant management:
- Call Analysis: Speech Analytics allows you to listen to and dissect customer calls. This technology identifies emotions in the voice as well as words or phrases signaling frustrations, helping to pinpoint critical moments.
- Identify Trends: Using advanced acoustic and semantic analysis techniques, Speech Analytics quickly detects recurring sources of dissatisfaction. The tool compiles this information and presents it in detailed reports, allowing you to prioritize the problems to be solved.
- Real-time monitoring of action plans: One of the major strengths of Speech Analytics is its ability to provide real-time monitoring. This allows you to anticipate trends, measure the effectiveness of corrective actions, and react quickly to critical situations. Integrated monitoring and alerting features enable continuous performance monitoring and strategy adjustments accordingly.
In summary, Speech Analytics transforms raw data into actionable insights, thereby facilitating continuous improvement of the customer experience. This is evidenced by Vanessa from Groupe Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs, who was able to identify and resolve a recurring pain point in their customer journey:
