I am standing at the counter in front of a human being asking for her help. She points me to an application on my phone.
I press a button on my phone to buy something, the thing I bought is different from what I received. Getting this resolved takes phone calls, emails, contact through applications, all to wind up back at a website or application.
In the end, you may find yourself at your credit card company who will take you through the same experience until you waste so much time that you give up.
You order something to eat, it comes cold, it comes damaged, it comes wrong, getting the order right and resolved feels like climbing a mountain or going on an adventure.
Renting a car, it is all frictionless, no people involved but liability is all on you even if the company is not honest. You are still responsible.
Is it frictionless for your benefit or for theirs?
There is very little brand loyalty by the people who represent the brand itself. Outsourcing, layoffs, bullshit leadership games that people play and a new generation of people in the workforce who work only to the extent they need to for themselves, create an environment for “I don’t care about you.”
It’s getting colder day by day and more disconnected. The notifications are high, and transaction rates are moving in the right direction perceptually based on frequency but ask anyone who travels if they’d rather fly today or if possible, travel by another mechanism.
Transaction rates mean that the frequency of technical interactions. Some business peoples associate higher with better but higher may mean mo’ troubles. You have to “measure what matters” and understand what the heck you are measuring. 15 of something vs 50 means what?
Betta Experience for Da Customa?
Google “customer experience” or “user experience” or “total experience” and you’ll learn about what companies and organizations are doing in this space. For some organizations, they are looking for ways to make things better for people. For others, experience-based consultancy and industry trends lean in on ways to make things less costly for companies while removing interactions for end users or customers. The challenge with this approach is that it is a sneaky way to create process improvement while removing opportunities to protect the customer experience and enhance it.
Let’s look at what most companies or organizations are looking to do:
- Provide a good or service (make money)
- Service and support this good or service (maintain brand and make more money)
- Lower costs and risks while increasing throughput and outcomes (make more money within quality parameters that are *cough* acceptable)
What can be said about all companies regardless of whether they are non-profit or profit oriented is that they need to generate income. As companies go through their own lifecycles, their founders will transition out. Some companies maintain their standing and brand while others, shift as they leverage the brand to grow.
Why is this important? Generally speaking, the love, passion and purpose shifts as the company matures. At the same time, generations who carry memories move on and the stories are forgotten. These stories and behaviors not only made the company better for people who worked for these companies but it had a direct impact on customer experience.
When I joined Chubb insurance, I heard stories about the CEO who had retired long ago. I heard about mini-Olympic games, holiday parties, bonuses, people celebrating together and people proudly representing a company that had a brand which could NOT be touched. Throughout my time at Chubb, I heard so many stories but on the other side of these stories, there were experiences for customers that were so compelling and powerful, it made me quickly realize why anyone would trust Chubb. As I was there, transformation started taking place. Heavy focus on revenue and divestment in employees with a strong shift towards automation and straight through processing and outsourcing. While Chubb makes more money today as an Evan Greenberg company, there’s isn’t the love and passion. People no longer “bleed blue” and they go to work bust their assess and look for ways to make money. For the most expensive and highest value clients, they get amazing experiences but for the general public or just plain ole’ Joe of the old days who was willing to pay a little more for Chubb.. well good luck brah.. I’ve been to the call centers so.. I can tell you how I know.
What does this mean?
If you have a lot of money, you can have a frictionless experience and great support! This does not apply to the general public. This applies to the 1-2% of people who have F/U money.
I promise you; we can find story after story of companies who don’t give a shit and have made a significant investment in customer experience. Interestingly enough, companies are much more likely to invest in (CX) over (EX) employee experience. Don’t you want your employees to have a good experience? Not really!
Why’s that? Well, companies don’t want employees! Some sources suggest that nearly 70% of companies or organizations with 50 or more employees are highly likely to outsource!
What does that mean? Well, they hire “mercenaries” of sorts to do the work because it lowers costs and potentially increases productivity.
“Oh, Howie you are overreacting, and this doesn’t mean that it creates a bad customer experience”
Bologna! When you hire or outsource work to an extent that it diminishes or dilutes the organizational culture, you lost your brand.
Think about it, how many companies or organizations that you’ve trusted over the years have changed to the extent that you are barely loyal to them? How many companies do you use because it is just too inconvenient to change?
Microtransactions, monopolies and monarchies, oh my~!
When you purchase almost anything today you get the “maybe price” meaning the price you think you are going to pay is merely an estimate of what you really will pay. After all there are transaction fees, concession fees, 7 layers of taxes, you are a real person fee, you asked for a real person fee, you had a transaction in this state fee, this town fee, and an automatic tip because the person that didn’t interact with you or even look at you in the face as you did your own transaction really should be paid by you because she did a fantastic job of looking at her nails.
Fact is, you didn’t even need a person there. It’s like those people who hold signs for businesses that are closing. “George’s furniture end of end sale, 50% off” and some dude is holding the sign up. He needs a tip!
Now, if you bought an Adobe subscription for personal use, go see if you can unsubscribe. Go find the way.. It would cost you less money to just hire someone to help you.
How many companies just increase your price without even telling you while lowering the services they provide?
When you call, you get someone from a different country that not only doesn’t speak your language but is on voice over IP so the quality is almost as good as a when phone lines had operators!!! “one ringy dingy”
Disconnections, lack of communication, no understanding, requiring proof of everything and can’t go to store to return shit. Yeah, great!
So, here we are, heading into total automation. Not long from now, you will have no opportunity to deal with a human being at all.
Do you understand me? Let me make this clear and for those who have read my predictions over the years, you’ll know, I have a high probability of being right on the money.
Starting between NOW and the next 3-5 years, companies will replace people with AI for all aspects of customer service. What this means is that the intelligence technologies will have some parameters they are working with to help satisfy the customer but at the end of the day, the machine will have rules, and these will not be broken.
Now, initially very smart people will find ways to hack the tech and work around the rules, get free things and all sorts of fun stuff. Think about kicking the vending machines while no one is watching, getting some free chips. That will end as companies learn.
Grocery stores will have less staff and people will not require check out. It has already been proven out that between emerging technology and security systems, that you can fart in a store, and someone will know about it because some heat was detected in the area near your buttocks. Think I am wrong? Ask a person who works with security technologies.
Customer support people will be AI. When you make a phone call, it won’t be a person. At the start of this they may self-identify as AI. As this gets better and better, they will just be a name and something that sounds like a person. Good luck with arguing with that machine.
Sales will go up and complaints will go down. Why would complaints go down? Because when people fail to see results when they complain, they turn into something that looks like a caught animal. They just freeze and stop complaining because they realize it is a waste of time. They accept the situation and just take the loss.
How do we know this?
Look at how people behave with service companies? Cable companies? Subscriptions? People today have so many different subscriptions, they need to hire companies to de-subscribe them because they don’t even know what they are subscribed to.
This gives companies the ability to act with less integrity and become more relentless. On top of this, they grow and eat up companies that have a better brand until they consume that and turn the brand into the equivalent of a twinkie. I used to love twinkies.
Is there hope?
You tell me. From where I sit for over 20 years, I’ve predicted how what is happening would play out if the conditions were right and people took limited or no action. I may have been wrong about the timing, but I was always right about the outcome. I believe we are headed for fundamentally better overall experiences for wealthy people willing to spend much more on themselves vs people who either choose not to spend as much or have the ability to spend as much. For these people, they will get what they get and have limited ability to complain.
There will be companies that bring great brands and experiences to market. Once they gain traction, Pacman will come and eat them up. No CEO is going to say “No” to the big dollar. Now, even if they did, the board could force them to take a deal, or they could get old. Much more likely that they take the “dub” and move on.
It may also be said that small businesses will provide better experience but as AI becomes more affordable, they too can use “virtual Jessie” to do many things.
If we want things to change, we can’t just accept that “it is what it is” that said, I think it may be too late as companies now expect that I have a cell phone to transact with them and do business with them. We are in a place that cash may go away. Once there is no cash, there will be no turning back because at that point everyone will be forced to have a device. This will enable automation of every aspect of everything with very little wiggle room.
Hey!!! What do you think? I’d like to know and if you like this post, please subscribe to my blog and follow me, you’ll forget or ignore my emails at some point but I’ll be really happy because my numbers will be up and I think that my writing is so good that I am attracting and maintaining an amazing audience! Whoooooooo!!!!!