The rise of ‘do it yourself’ customer support

One of the more bizarre con­sumer trends to emerge on social media is the rise of ‘unbox­ing’. Some videos of this phe­nom­e­non, where view­ers tune in to watch an influ­encer unpack their lat­est pur­chase, have reached upwards of 105 mil­lion views. 

Part of the rea­son for their pop­u­lar­i­ty is that these videos tap into that moment of antic­i­pa­tion as we rip open the pack­ag­ing on some­thing we’ve been look­ing for­ward to open­ing. If the expe­ri­ence, and what’s inside, doesn’t meet our expec­ta­tions, we can be left feel­ing very dis­ap­point­ed. 

Why does this mat­ter? Well, busi­ness­es tend to focus their invest­ment in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence on the jour­ney to con­ver­sion. But all too often it is post-sale where the loy­al­ty bat­tle is real­ly won. In PwC’s Glob­al Con­sumer Insights Pulse sur­vey, reli­a­bil­i­ty was most like­ly to secure brand loy­al­ty, cit­ed by 46% of con­sumers ques­tioned, ahead of prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty on 31%. Excep­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice was the third high­est cri­te­ria, at 26%. 

This data sug­gests reli­a­bil­i­ty and cus­tomer ser­vice clear­ly go hand in hand. This is espe­cial­ly the case for today’s elec­tron­ic devices, which may be man­u­fac­tured to the high­est spec­i­fi­ca­tion but are also becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­plex. 

Equip customers with tools and information

This device com­plex­i­ty can leave cus­tomers unsure how best to set up or use their devices. And if that infor­ma­tion can­not be eas­i­ly found as part of the set-up expe­ri­ence or online, it can lead to a del­uge of calls and emails to the manufacturer’s con­tact cen­tre. That makes it imper­a­tive to ensure cus­tomers have the right infor­ma­tion, mak­ing con­sumer edu­ca­tion the first line of defence in cus­tomer care, while online is the bat­tle­ground.

WiFi net­work­ing com­pa­ny TP-Link is one com­pa­ny that has been address­ing this area of cus­tomer ser­vice. Its UK man­ag­ing direc­tor, Will Liu, explains how the com­pa­ny aims to min­imise unnec­es­sary sup­port calls by pro­vid­ing an intu­itive set-up expe­ri­ence that invites users to down­load an app to guide them through the process.

“To help cus­tomers get the right set up for their home or office we’ve devel­oped apps for com­plex prod­ucts like routers and wire­less access points. Apps are sec­ond nature to con­sumers, even ‘Boomers’ [those aged 57 to 75]. Famil­iar­i­ty with the app ecosys­tem means we can use our tech­ni­cal knowhow to guide the least tech-savvy con­sumers through the net­work con­fig­u­ra­tion process,” he says.

Design­ing a com­pre­hen­sive ‘out of the box’ expe­ri­ence is so impor­tant because of the impact it can have on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and sub­se­quent brand rep­u­ta­tion. Liu says the num­ber of sup­port calls it receives about set­ting up its routers has dropped by more than 6% since intro­duc­ing the app, while reviews on Ama­zon and Reevoo are now more pos­i­tive. 

For mobile phone retail­er and oper­a­tor Three, mak­ing the most of all of its com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels to stay in close con­tact with cus­tomers dur­ing the crit­i­cal ear­ly days and weeks of their device usage is key. It also offers cus­tomers an app, while also point­ing peo­ple to dig­i­tal con­tent on its web­site that can help with set­up and usage.  

“In the first few weeks we are very atten­tive to make sure cus­tomers get sup­port and we offer an ongo­ing pro­gramme of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with tips and tricks,”  Three’s dig­i­tal direc­tor Jon Davies reveals. “If they do have prob­lems they can talk via chat, pick up the phone or go in-store. We’ll con­tin­ue to make that more sophis­ti­cat­ed as we under­stand more about cus­tomers’ device usage.”

Encour­ag­ing cus­tomers to self-serve infor­ma­tion is a crit­i­cal pil­lar of cus­tomer care. Not only does it have the poten­tial to be more effi­cient and sat­is­fy­ing for the cus­tomer, but it reduces cost-to-serve for the com­pa­ny and allows cus­tomer care teams to focus on more com­plex needs. But for this to be effec­tive, organ­i­sa­tions have to make sure their sys­tems are up to the task. 

“There are many use cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the cus­tomer is swap­ping devices or oper­at­ing sys­tems, where we are invest­ing in improv­ing search capa­bil­i­ty to allow them to find infor­ma­tion more eas­i­ly. A big cohort of cus­tomers will use Google as the first point of con­tact so we have to opti­mise our pages to make sure they’re vis­i­ble there,” Davies explains. “The ser­vice side is just as impor­tant to make sure those pages are vis­i­ble and opti­mised.”

One thing com­pa­nies are increas­ing­ly con­scious of is the need to be avail­able in the same chan­nels as cus­tomers. Some peo­ple will always want to speak to some­one at a con­tact cen­tre how­ev­er sophis­ti­cat­ed the self-ser­vice chan­nels might be. This means com­pa­nies must ensure sup­port options are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble when­ev­er rel­e­vant. 

“There is typ­i­cal­ly a triage approach. Here is the con­tent if you want to do it your­self but we will pro­mote chat and have a chat­bot that will also do its best to sup­port the cus­tomer. If it can’t solve the issue, it will hand them off [to an agent]. It’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly con­text-sen­si­tive to know what the right time is to push them in that direc­tion,” Davies says. 

Technology to augment service expertise

While being avail­able in the right chan­nel is key, so too is under­stand­ing the query and the lev­el of help that might be need­ed. Some cus­tomers may sim­ply be get­ting in con­tact to find out when their bill is due. Oth­ers may want answers to much more com­pli­cat­ed ques­tions. 

For this rea­son, TP-Link offers sev­er­al avenues for cus­tomer sup­port, while its cus­tomer ser­vice staff are trained to deal with calls both from those with few tech­ni­cal skills who want the per­son­al touch and those who are extreme­ly tech­ni­cal and there­fore can­not find an answer to their query via oth­er means.

“Because one-to-one sup­port is at the two oppos­ing ends of the spec­trum, our sup­port team are all high­ly skilled net­work­ing engi­neers who under­stand the impli­ca­tions of oth­er envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors and the poten­tial knock-on effect to the customer’s expe­ri­ence,” he explains.

To be able to pro­vide opti­mal cus­tomer ser­vice, agents need to be able to access the lat­est infor­ma­tion and, crit­i­cal­ly, have the tech­nol­o­gy to do that quick­ly. Accord­ing to data from Call Cen­tre Helper, the tech and device indus­try stan­dard aver­age han­dle time – the time it takes to deal with a query – is six min­utes and 10 sec­onds. First call res­o­lu­tion is deemed to be the gold stan­dard of cus­tomer ser­vice because it avoids the need to call the cus­tomer back or hand them over to a more expe­ri­enced mem­ber of staff. 

This lev­el of cus­tomer sup­port is often the rea­son cus­tomers seek out spe­cial­ist retail­ers. Which? Mag­a­zine named Rich­er Sounds the best place to buy tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts, part­ly due to price but also for its rep­u­ta­tion, cus­tomer ser­vice and war­ran­ty. Its cus­tomers cite “qual­i­ty prod­ucts with very good hon­est infor­ma­tion [and] knowl­edge­able, help­ful staff” as rea­sons why they score it high­ly.

Nathan Ken­naugh, HR direc­tor at the retail­er, explains that one of the rea­sons why it does not open its stores to the pub­lic until mid­day is because between 9am and noon its staff are on Zoom calls receiv­ing train­ing on spe­cial­ist tech­nolo­gies from man­u­fac­tur­ers. It also has a data­base of train­ing doc­u­ments and links to videos from man­u­fac­tur­ers so staff can keep their knowl­edge up-to-date.

“Train­ing is a huge part of what we do; we want our col­leagues to have the knowl­edge and be spe­cial­ists,” he says. “We place a lot of empha­sis on train­ing and tech­ni­cal con­tact, and our col­leagues have access to train­ing resource sites and epor­tals. That’s a resource that cov­ers the day to day queries we might receive but we still need the tech­ni­cal con­tacts for the weird and won­der­ful things that pop up once in a blue moon. We nev­er want to keep a cus­tomer wait­ing to get a res­o­lu­tion.”

Ken­naugh admits the com­pa­ny draws heav­i­ly on the fact that its cus­tomers are more tech-savvy than the aver­age con­sumer and are more will­ing to work in part­ner­ship with store staff to resolve a prob­lem, rather than expect­ing an instant res­o­lu­tion. He also notes that the com­pa­ny is not yet look­ing to adopt auto­mat­ed cus­tomer ser­vice solu­tions whole­sale.

“We’ve explored chat­bots but from the cus­tomer ser­vice side, we’re pret­ty old school. With chat­bots, we ques­tion if it could real­ly under­stand the ins and outs of a nuanced prob­lem and we don’t want to cause fur­ther frus­tra­tion with a cus­tomer that’s already upset,” he says.

For spe­cial­ist retail­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers, the direct route to human cus­tomer ser­vice oper­a­tives who are enabled and aug­ment­ed by tech­nol­o­gy may still be the most effec­tive option. But for large con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, and par­tic­u­lar­ly for man­u­fac­tur­ers that rely on third-par­ty resellers, the issue of man­ag­ing brand rep­u­ta­tion through cus­tomer ser­vice is one that is gal­vanis­ing some into action. 

For TP-Link, this means work­ing with retail­ers such as Cur­rys PC world or Ama­zon to pro­vide their staff with the tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to sell and offer basic cus­tomer sup­port, as well as tak­ing advan­tage of their cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment process­es. But it also clear­ly sign­posts its own sup­port options on pack­ag­ing and offers quick instal­la­tion guides.

Three’s Davies believes there is ever more scope to use tech­nol­o­gy to enable both the company’s sup­port staff and improved self-serve options. For exam­ple, its app allows cus­tomers to triage them­selves if, say, the screen or bat­tery is not work­ing. A cus­tomer ser­vice agent can then pick that up and feed the issue to the logis­tics team.

“We’re in pret­ty good shape with a knowl­edge man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty that strad­dles both human and dig­i­tal chan­nels,” he says.

“Quite sim­ply, we are striv­ing to pro­vide the cus­tomer with the capa­bil­i­ty to exe­cute as much as pos­si­ble them­selves. It’s what they’ve told us they want to do.”