Customer Effort score has been shown to be more predictive of future value than either Net Promoter or Customer Satisfaction scores. However relatively few companies use it measure customer interactions so it was interesting to receive BT’s text questionnaire last week following a recent fault repair.
As a customer it certainly created a better impression than many of BT’s other attempts. As a marketer and customer I wonder if BT have the processes in place to respond when a customer reports high customer effort and that an issue has not been successfully completed?
Looking at the detail of the text string we see they have prioritised overall customer effort, confirmation of a successful completion, customer effort of last touch-point, likely to recommend and finally free text.
Of course the highly restricted nature of the medium does force the customer into very polarised answers. So despite the fact
that BT hadn’t kept me up to date as they had promised, and despite the fact that I don’t believe the problem has been resolved my first instinct was to score the process as easy when clearly it has not lived up to their promise or met my need.
Also because the recipient isn’t able to scan ahead and see that there is an opportunity to provide more detail about any issues they may well be tempted, as I was, not to complete the survey. First instincts are that you can’t properly explain any issue you may have had.
The risk is that BT may inadvertently leave some readers with the feeling that this survey is making things harder, not easier.
The one change I would strongly urge BT to make is to invite customers to request a call back if they’d like to talk about their repair in more detail. This is important because it allows customers to put their issues first; before the company starts firing the questions that is interested in getting answers to.
“Hello BT here, we’ve got 4 questions about your recent fault. Reply with your answer (at normal text rate), or reply STOP to opt out. If you’d like to talk in more detail you can request a call-back at any time here. Q1….”
Footnote: Four days after completing the survey and explaining that the issue has not been resolved my BT Infinity line still has intermittent service, I have not heard back from BT. If you are going to ask your customers about their experiences then don’t fall into this trap. You have to think through the process and be able to respond quickly when problems are revealed. Fail to do so and any good first impressions may instead confirm your customers’ worse fears that you really are too big to give a damn.
