Getting to the Root of Displeasure

As a business, you expect to hear from your customers, and you probably welcome their calls because they give you valuable insight into their perception of your company. The last thing you or your call center agents want is to continually be handling upset customers or worse, repeat callers. Managing a large number of complaints or repeat callers, it is costly to businesses in the way of financial resources and agent productivity.

The best thing a call center can do is track the underlying reason or root for every call or lost customer. And then take necessary steps to fix the root cause quickly to minimize these conversations or future customer loss. While many businesses are starting to focus on improving the customer experience (CX), most fail to track or research the causes of dissatisfaction.

It would be easy if customers were always willing to share their thoughts or opinions of their brand when they were dissatisfied. In many cases, 91% of upset customers simply stay silent. While it may seem easier to ignore angry customers, they provide valuable information. Uncovering the reason for a customer’s displeasure can increase customer retention, improve revenue, and help you build a stronger business.

Common causes of displeasure

Common causes of displeasure that cost businesses customers include:

Failure to meet customer expectations

Failing to meet customer expectations is a big reason for customers to call the contact center or find a new business to work with. But, before you can meet their expectations you need to understand them.  Speech analytics allow you to monitor, categorize and score every conversation to help you uncover insights on how your customers define satisfaction.

Unpleasant call center agents

The worst experience a customer can have is to contact a call center with a request, only to be greeted by an unpleasant agent. Lack of customer service can quickly turn a loyal customer into a lost one.

Misleading information

Sometimes customers expect certain results because of marketing campaigns, and then they don’t occur. When that happens, customers are more likely to lose trust in your company.

Pushy employees

When customers are in the buying stage of the customer journey, they are usually interacting with employees of the business. When employees come off as too pushy or try to sell an item the customer doesn’t need, it can leave them feeling frustrated with the process and your brand.

Disappointment in product or service

Too often the reason a customer is dissatisfied is because they are unhappy with the product or service they purchased. In some cases, it is due to a product malfunction, and in other cases it has to do with their lack of knowledge on how to use it.

How can you uncover the root of displeasure?

Each of these reasons for dissatisfaction requires a different approach and steps to fix it and minimize continued calls. It can seem impossible to uncover the root of every call, especially if you manage a large number daily. Many businesses have found success using the 5 Whys template.

The “5 Whys” is a question and answer approach to uncovering why a customer called your business with the goal being to uncover the cause of the call or problem by asking “Why?” five times. Take a look at the steps to properly implement the approach in your call center.

Step One: Identify the problem.

After listening to the customer, the agent should repeat back what they believe is the problem that needs fixed. And ask the customer to confirm they understand correctly.

Step Two: Ask the customer why this occurred.

Ask the customer why this occurred and then listen to their response.

Step Three: Determine if this is the root of displeasure.

Once they have finished explaining, review the reason to see if could be another potential cause.

Step Four: Repeat the previous two steps until you uncover the root.

If there is any room for another possible cause, repeat steps two and three until you believe you have the real reason for the problem.

Step Five: Fix the root of displeasure.

Take the necessary steps to fix the problem and satisfy the customer. It is crucial that during this step you don’t just alleviate the customer’s symptoms, but that you fix it to prevent future calls and upset customers.

Step Six: Continue to analyze incoming calls to assure the problem is resolved.

To truly know if you fixed the root cause of displeasure, you need to continue analyzing incoming calls and call outcomes to make sure there are no relevant continued trends.

By using speech analytics software with a guided root cause feature, you can automate the process of listening and tracking incoming calls. Analytics software let you define keywords during conversations and trigger notifications to management and the agent on what steps to take next.

To minimize the number of dissatisfied customers and calls to your contact center, start tracking the reasons for calls today. Once you have enough data, you can categorize the roots of displeasure into appropriate categories and create a plan of action on how to fix the problem for future customers.

What methods do you use in your business to understand the root cause of customer dissatisfaction?