Every organization aims to provide their customers with the best experience possible. In the pursuit of good customer service values, there are certain values that agents should never follow.
When customer support agents deliver poor customer service, there are many negative impacts. Before we look at bad customer service examples that your customer support team should avoid, let's look at the impact of such negative service.
What is the Impact of Poor Customer Service?
When agents provide customers with a negative service experience, it can impact business in many different ways. Let's look at some of them.
1. Increase in average handle time
When agents haven't made the right preparations to solve customer queries, it can result in making customers stay on hold. Customer service representatives need to take extra time to resolve customer queries.
Such lengthy hold times result in an increase in average handle time. This has a direct impact on agent performance metrics.
2. Negative brand perception
When the customer support team provides a bad customer experience, customers tend to perceive your organization in a negative manner. This results in negative reviews, declining customer loyalty, and also takes longer to acquire more customers.
3. Reduced customer satisfaction
When customers face a negative customer service experience, it can have a drastic impact on customer satisfaction levels. When customers are dissatisfied with the experience they receive, it can also impact other aspects like how they perceive your organization and other customer satisfaction metrics like customer loyalty.
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Now that we've seen how bad customer service can impact the customer experience let's look at some examples of poor customer service that customer service agents should never follow.
What are Negative Customer Service Values Agents Should Never Follow?
There are certain customer service values that are helpful and others that agents should never follow when interacting with customers. Let's now look at these bad customer service values that agents shouldn't be following.
1. Making customers wait on hold
When organizations receive calls about customer concerns, they're kept on hold for either of 2 reasons.
One possibility is when there aren't any free agents to pick up the call. The other reason is if the agent doesn't know how to solve the customer's concern.
Imagine the emergency of a customer calling a pharmacy. When they aren't provided with real-time support, it shows the inefficiency in the customer service team.
Why is this bad?
The customer expectation when calling an organization for help is to reach the support team immediately as well as have their queries resolved in a timely manner.
When a customer support team takes a long time to respond to a customer or resolve their query, it shows their lack of concern to provide a high service quality.
Customers having to wait for a lengthy amount of time can be poor customer service, especially when it comes to the health industry.
How to fix this?
In situations where the service team is short-staffed, it means that the organization needs to hire more agents for the job. It can be difficult when you look at the never-ending increase in attrition rates, but companies need to take a conscious effort.
In case of agents finding it difficult to solve complex customer queries, using tools like real-time agent monitoring will help. Agents can search the database to find relevant documents that can help the customer with their query.
2. Ignoring customer problems on social media
Customers often resort to social media to voice their displeasure. If the social media team doesn't respond to these customer complaints, it shows their lack of concern for solving customer queries.
Why is this bad?
The reason that customer complaints are voiced on social media is that they're unhappy with the resolution provided when they contact the support team. When these complaints from unhappy customers go unnoticed on social media, they see it as a lack of willingness to help.
If these posts aren't responded to, it can lead to more customer complaints on these social media platforms.
How to fix this?
Every organization should have a team of at least 1 agent to ensure that customers don't turn to social media when they become unhappy. This team should contact customers who post their complaints on social media.
This team should be responsible for pacifying unhappy customers and providing them with the resolution they didn't get during their interaction with an agent.
3. Transferring customers to irrelevant departments
Have your agents ever unnecessarily transferred customers to a department that couldn't help them?
Why is this bad?
When customers are transferred to departments irrelevant to their query, it can lead to frustrated customers. When such poor customer service is repeated often, it can lead to a dip in customer satisfaction and NPS scores.
How to fix this?
Agents should be aware of the responsibilities of different support teams and be able to transfer customers to the relevant departments. One way to ensure that agents have the right knowledge is by conducting meetings whenever there are changes in the scope of work undertaken by different departments.
Ensure Your Agents Follow the Right Customer Service Values!
4. Using foul language with customers
Agents should never use negative language or have an improper attitude when dealing with customers. This reflects poor agent training and can adversely affect customer satisfaction.
Why is this bad?
Using an impolite tone when talking to customers can see decreasing satisfaction levels. It can also lead to various impacts on agent performance.
How to fix this?
Using real-time monitoring tools helps agents to understand if their tone is becoming unsatisfactory. Agents will receive a message to speak calmer and slower if they're speaking in an agitated voice.
5. Mishandling sensitive customer information
Mishandling sensitive customer information can lead to many compliance violations. When agents don't file customer information, it can lead to HIPAA or PCI-DSS violations, depending on the kind of data handled by the agent.
Why is this bad?
If sensitive customer data becomes leaked, it can bring about compliance violation lawsuits. Apart from the financial implications of these lawsuits, it can also impede customer perception of your organization.
How to fix this?
The best way to reduce the mishandling of customer data is by using call center technology that follows compliance guidelines when handling data within the software. With Convin
6. Making it difficult for customers to reach you
With organizations moving towards omnichannel contact centers, some channels become difficult for customers to reach out to.
Why is this bad?
When customers find it difficult to reach out to the service team, it affects the Customer Effort Score (CES). It also has a negative effect on the way customers perceive your support channels.
How to fix this?
The best way for organizations to ensure that customers can easily reach out to them is by mentioning the support channels on their website and social media handles.
Now that we've seen the different examples of bad customer service, let's look at how to help agents follow the right service value.
Results first, payment later.
Ensuring Agents Follow the Right Customer Service Values
Helping agents follow good customer service values can be done in two ways. One is by giving them occasional training on examples of bad service values they should avoid.
The other way is to invest in call center software that helps agents stay away from compliance violations and improve their performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is an example of bad customer service?
An example of bad customer service is showing an incorrect attitude when dealing with customers.
2. What are the signs of bad customer service?
Signs of bad customer service include negative language and improper handling of sensitive customer information.
3. How to provide good customer service?
Agents should be able to help customers resolve their queries in the smoothest possible manner. Another way to provide good customer service is by being courteous and polite when dealing with customers at all times.
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