ARE YOU PREPARED?
There Is An Uber Coming To Every Industry
Are You Prepared?
Remember when we used to hear Prince sing“… party like it’ s 1999” and it seemed so far into the future. How about the year 2020? Well, it is just about here, less than three years away. Like parts of the show The Jetsons, the future is now a reality. Today, robots assemble our cars and move Amazon fulfillment center shelves around.
And the call centers of tomorrow are right around the corner. Today, many customers get irritated by customer service reps that seem to just be going through the motions, giving us scripted answers, rushing us along because they are trying to adhere to their strict allowed-time-per-call.
If you think that is bad, just wait. Within a few short years, we will be talking to actual robots working in these call centers. Many companies that run outsourced call centers are working towards turning these jobs over to machines. An article that appeared in the consumer website Consumerist(“ As Expected, Robots Are Taking Over Call Center Jobs”) tells how advances in artificial intelligence will mean that call center representatives and chat representatives can be replaced with cheap and reliable“ workers” who don’ t need sleep or meal breaks.
IS YOUR BUSINESS UBER-PROOF? Make no mistake about it— every industry has an Uber coming. And every business is in danger of being made obsolete as some new business model with cuttingedge technology enters your industry and steals the majority of your market share.“ Digital disruption,” the new buzzword for this phenomenon, is everywhere, warns CMSWire. com in Clint Oram’ s article“ Has Your Business Been Ubered?”:
We see business model after business model disrupted by the ridiculously fast evolution in mobile tech. New marketplaces are popping up all over the place, and increasingly faster communication keeps connecting buyers and sellers in new ways. Technology has truly punched the accelerator on business transformation in so many industries. But through all of this, one immutable fact remains— the customer is king.
Customers today expect immediate answers and instant gratification. You may have a fantastic product or service, but if you don’ t put an outstanding customer experience at the center of all your business planning, you will lose. This means the most impactful digital transformation strategy for your business centers around transforming your customers’ experience with your company. In short: Make it easy. Make it awesome.
The more you intersperse technology between the customer and the company, the more you create complex systems prone to break down, and the more you remove the sense of dealing with a human being. Whether the technology is complex voice mail systems or social media, the net effect is to depersonalize contact between customer and company.
Technology can never be empathetic, build relationships, or make a brilliant comeback when your company drops the ball. Customers crave recognition and a personalized experience. In short, technology cannot provide genuine hospitality. It cannot express empathy, make people feel good, take care of others, express emotions and vulnerability in a relatable way, or make people laugh.
We have subconsciously sent the wrong message to all of our employees that customer service is about the technology: the websites, apps, social media, virtual tours, iPads, kiosks, and self-checkouts. So
our employees start using the technology as a crutch, thinking they have less importance and less of a role with our customers. They rely on the technology to provide the experience. We need to reverse that. Customer experience is 10 percent technology and 90 percent you.
URX You need to make sure that your employees know and understand one critical thing: They are the customer experience.
Those employees who understand that the human touch is an indispensable part, the most important part, of a great customer experience will make the difference. Customers are starving for a humanized experience. To be a person … who matters … with a life. It’ s really about human connection. Whether it is face-to-face, earto-ear, or click-to-click. +
BY: JOHN DIJULIUS PRESIDENT, THE DIJULIUS GROUP
John R. DiJulius III is the author of The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow convention Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World,( January 2015 Greenleaf Books). He is the president of The DiJulius Group— a Customer service consulting firm that works with companies like Starbucks, Chick-fi l-A, The Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. You can email him at john @ thedijuliusgroup. com
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