According to the much-respected biannual UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) into national standards of customer service in the UK, we have turned a corner and the seemingly continual slide into customer service oblivion has been reversed.
It is certainly worthy of note, but perhaps not yet celebration. Personally speaking, as a consumer, far too often I feel like I am engaged in a war of attrition; battling poorly thought-through self-serve journeys, frankly not-fit-for-purpose chatbots, and all too often, agents reading from a script with super-low levels of competence.
I have been a loyal customer of a particular high street bank for more than 20 years. The fraud software spotted some “suspicious activity” on my account (as it does incorrectly almost every week). On this occasion, the AI guessed correctly. Certainly not worthy of a medal given the literally countless previous fails! Anyway, I was obliged to call the fraud team and spoke to an employee of the bank, not an agent working for a BPO (I checked).
One assumes Agent Z must have received some training, but training doesn’t equal competence
Prior to the call, I had established that one of the three transactions was fraudulent; the agent cancelled my card and said he would send a new one to an old address of mine – one I moved from a couple of years ago. I asked him not to, and why he was using that address, as I no longer lived there and the bank writes to me frequently at the “new” address. I didn’t get a coherent answer.
Now we move to the really special part of my customer experience. Agent Z (it would be unfair to anybody who ever scored an A at anything to label this chap Agent A) spent 15 minutes attempting to change my address on the system. I phonetically spelt it six times, including the country! Exasperated, I asked him what he was doing with the information I gave him: was he writing it down, typing it into a system, what? He was “Googling it”. Quite why, I have no idea, and then he was typing it into the UK Post Office postcode checker and it “wasn’t working”. Who knew a foreign address wouldn’t be in the UK postcode system?
In the end, my patience was exhausted and I asked to be transferred to an agent who might be able to assist me. After a wait and a cold transfer, I was back at the beginning trying to change my address. Fortunately, this agent – we shall call her Agent A – knew her stuff and efficiently updated the system so my new card would arrive in the correct letterbox.
I had always assumed that the fraud teams were likely to be more experienced and of higher competence than general customer services. Particularly, given the recent change in the law regarding “Failure to Prevent Fraud” legislation, I had assumed this raised the bar and focussed minds.
This struck me as a good example of why firms in the sector really need to get on top of agent competence and not just tick training boxes and hope for the best. Without wishing to be unkind, Agent Z was incompetent and his employer should have known that and never put him on the phones when he clearly wasn’t ready to deal with even relatively simple customer requests.
The fact of the matter is that the employer wasn’t measuring agent competence. If they were, then there is no way they would have let Agent Z anywhere near a call that was already predisposed to have some complexity potential (I had already said I didn’t recognise a transaction, which is why I was speaking to the Fraud Team). One assumes Agent Z must have received some training, but training doesn’t equal competence. Measuring the fact that training has occurred and Agent Z has attended is more likely to give the employer a false positive than ensure competence.
Agent Z isn’t going to stick around long having “car-crash” 15-minute conversations with customers fearful of fraud on their account and less likely to be forgiving than they may be under less stressful circumstances. Employers should also be monitoring, with the permission of their employees, their mental health and wellness. With Gen Z now making up 30% of the workforce and 49% of Gen Z presenting with some mental health issue, employers have an undeniable vested interest in helping all employees, especially the younger ones, improve their resilience and wellbeing.
Equally, the industry relies on the co-operation of the public to act when they see something suspicious. If the process of “acting” is arduous, painful, and flawed, then this undermines public confidence and will erode public participation. The last thing the industry and individual firms want is the public withdrawing their discretional effort and firms putting customer accounts on stop and having to chase customers. Ultimately, if the fraud process is sufficiently painful and I end up locked out of my account(s), I am most likely to simply switch supplier in the hopes of getting a better experience elsewhere. None of which bodes well for a sector engaged in a cultural remap under Consumer Duty.
Lowest cost to train in the shortest possible time and “hitting and hoping” against a backdrop of increasing complexity, more demanding consumers, and tougher legislation is so wrong. Gen Z are already struggling and, as the gulf grows between the work-readiness of youngsters entering the workplace and the rapid disappearance of the entry-level roles of old, the workplace is undoubtedly going to face a talent shortage. Recruits are already “vetting” employers.
Arguably, it won’t be very long before some employers find hiring new talent their biggest barrier to growth. Employees don’t just want more pounds per hour worked, or trips to London, or duvet days, or chill rooms in the office; they want genuine support to enable them to function and flourish in the workplace. “One and done” training, hoping the employee will work it out for themselves on the job, just isn’t going to cut it. And all too quickly, disgruntled and poorly supported recruits will take to public social media forums and diss your brand.
Competence is the application of skills and knowledge. In this instance, I speak in relation to a job function. It is relatively easily measured and best done so on a gentle, collaborative, and daily basis. If an employer embraces this continual assessment philosophy, then they will find it typically uses less than one minute of an agent’s working day, not only to assess but also to dynamically course-correct, build competence to the required level, support wellbeing, and breed confidence – which collectively will deliver the best Customer Experience (CX).
Culture ultimately will define whether a firm is predisposed to consistently deliver good customer outcomes. Interestingly, whilst the Regulator is perhaps rightly obsessing about the fair treatment of Vulnerable Customers, we might be well advised to pause and reflect on what percentage of those we employ to help ensure customers get good outcomes are themselves vulnerable and/or in need of help and support beyond some basic training. And what is the employer doing to ensure every employee has the help, support, and tools to thrive in their role?
I could imagine a number of folks reading this article arguing that they already do lots to help and support their employees and training genuinely does deliver workplace-competent employees. And they have a range of tools in place to help employees manage their wellbeing and resilience. I might ask what the source of truth is to substantiate that belief. How are they measuring these datapoints?
Talk is cheap, and the proof of the pudding is that when we deploy Clever Nelly for a new customer, the average level of in-role competence (using the customer’s own specific measures, not generic ones) is just 54%. And whilst most of our customers will have subscribed to any number of employee wellbeing, mental health assistance, and employee listening schemes, they all tell us utilisation is way lower than they would expect and certainly nowhere near the levels reflective of the 49% figure reported in the press.
It is well past the time for employers to walk the talk, and that means deploying a credible, continual assessment of individual employee in-role competence and wellbeing. Because we all know the old adage “what gets measured gets done,” and I am certain were more executives able to accurately quantify the actual levels of competence and wellbeing/resilience of their employees, they would act to rectify it immediately.
