How much time do you spend on the phone dealing with bad customer service?
According to an article by Brian O’Connell, writing in The Street, adults in the United States spend, on average, 364 minutes every year on the phone, waiting – and hoping – to fix a complaint. That’s about six and a half hours. Let’s put this in perspective. If you are one of these “average people,” in just a little over six years, you lose an entire work week of productivity; right about 40 hours! Worse than that, if you start thinking long term, as in about 25 years, you will have lost an entire month.
O’Connell’s information was based on data from Populus Research and Kana Software, who refer to the “complaint wait” as the “hidden price of doing business.” Some interesting stats and facts came from their study:
- 71% of US consumers have lodged a customer service complaint in the last three years and the time wasted on each complaint was one hour and four minutes.
- Getting the problem resolved took three attempts and 69% of the customers had to repeat their complaint multiple times.
- 39% of people use the phone to lodge a complaint. 33% use email.
- Only 7% turn to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp to vocalize their complaints.
That last statistic surprises me a bit. Based on other surveys, I thought more people had been turning to social media for customer service issues. 7% seems low. These are the “squeaky wheels that get the oil.” Even if the number is just 7%, these are the customers who broadcast negative publicity about your company to their friends, followers, and in some cases like Yelp, to the general public. That number is on the rise as consumers become better educated on how to effectively use social media to be heard and get their problems resolved.
For all types of businesses, especial B-2-C, the statistics in this article should be a wake-up call. I never thought about how much time the average customer spends on the phone dealing with complaints and other customer service issues. Time is a precious commodity, and if you “steal” it from a customer, you are showing a tremendous amount of disrespect.
When customers realize that a company they do business with is wasting their time by giving poor service, or forcing them to wait on the phone for customer support, they will consider finding another company to do business with who will give better service, quickly fix problems, and as a result, respect the customers’ time. Smart companies know this. They also know that is a value proposition that customers are willing to pay more for. So, here is your simple, common-sense, you-already-know-it-but-are-you-doing-it customer support strategy:
Fix problems quickly! And, with the right attitude!
Copyright 2014 by Shep Hyken. Reprinted with permission.
Last Updated: August 2014