The Human Factor in Customer Service

The consumer scorn for automated telephone call answering and routing systems, often referred to by consumers as “voice mail jail,” is hardly a new phenomenon.  Back in 1989, when I was the analyst covering the voice messaging industry at research firm Dataquest, dislike for interactive voice response (IVR) systems among the calling public was already an issue.  It’s hard to believe that it took nearly two decades for a movement like gethuman (www.gethuman.com) to appear.

When gethuman did appear in 2005, it appeared with a vengeance and the media loved it.  Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times covered the gethuman movement.  Katie Couric interviewed gethuman founder Paul English on the Today show and news programs on television networks ABC, CNN and Fox followed suit.  Paul English became a media sensation and a champion of the people almost overnight.  The gethuman movement, it seemed, was destined for greatness.

Capitalizing on its fame the gethuman website published a set of specifications for what it hoped would become standards for customer service phone systems and support.  This, I think, is where the gethuman movement began to falter.  In order for the gethuman standards to succeed in the contact center industry, two things would have to happen: 1) a company would have to admit it had a problem; and 2) the company would have to be willing to do something about it.  In our industry, that’s a pretty tall order.

I think there was an expectation among the founders of the gethuman movement that a consumer revolution was at hand – a show of consumer power so great that companies would have to comply with gethuman’s caller-friendly standards or risk losing their customers.  What actually happened was what usually happens after media frenzy dies down.  Nothing.

Oh sure, there were some companies that made an honest effort to better their IVR systems but they were in the minority.  The truth is that most consumers will complain and moan about an unfriendly IVR system but their relationship with a company, or the uniqueness of a company’s product or service, usually means that they probably won’t take their business elsewhere when they’re done complaining.  Kind of like rush hour traffic – we dislike it and complain about it but when all is said and done, we soldier on with it anyway.

While the gethuman movement seems to have slowed over the last year, there is new movement afoot.  The website was recently acquired by communications and contact center industry veteran Walt Tetschner of Tern Systems, Acton, MA.  Walt understands how things move in the contact center industry and has a vision for gethuman that is making www.gethuman.com a compelling destination for both consumers and businesses.

The first improvement at the gethuman website is the increase in consumer input.  Companies are now rated by consumers based upon the user friendliness and efficiency of their phone system.  Walt’s belief is that the more consumer input there is, the more useful the site will be to both consumers and to the businesses that serve them.

There will also be new categories for users to rate, which includes my own pet peeve – how easy was the agent to understand and how was his or her command of the English language.  Visitors to the site will also be able to tell their own tales of exemplary or horrible telephone-based customer service. 

Walt likens a poor telephone customer service strategy to a poor dog training strategy.  If you call your dog and he comes to you but you hit him on the head when he arrives, you may be able to get away with that once or twice.  By the third time your dog might still come to you, but he’ll come with his teeth bared.  Customers will do the same thing.  They may stick it out with poor telephone customer service a couple of times, then they get mad. 

Today there is a vision for the gethuman movement that makes sense and is achievable.  Walt Tetschner’s vision is simple:  improve customer service through better use of the telephone system and appropriate use of agent resources.  Providing high quality telephone service will invariably yield a measurable return on investment (ROI).  Beyond that, becoming gethuman compliant simply makes good business sense.

Before your customers get mad, it’s better to get human.  Check out the new information at www.gethuman.com and see if you don’t agree.