Your Call Is Very Important to Us

Recently, I wrote an article about the customer service farce. One of several examples I shared was the line we often hear when calling customer support: “Your call is very important to us.” When we hear it, we hope it’s true. We hope it means that the company is going to respect our time, that someone will pick up the call quickly (versus being put on hold for an unreasonable amount of time), and that the agent we talk to will have the knowledge and skills to answer our question or resolve our complaint, and we’ll not have to repeat our story again and again.

In our most recent customer service and CX research, we asked a number of questions about contact centers that convey the message, “Your call is very important to us.” The answers will make you smile – maybe even laugh. I’ve shared some of these findings from surveys from the previous year. Here are the latest with a couple of new ones. 

• Cleaning the Toilet: Nearly four out of 10 customers (39%) say they would rather clean a toilet than call customer support. (That’s gross!) 

• A Root Canal Is Better Than This: A third of U.S. customers (34%) would rather visit the dentist than call customer support. (That’s painful!) 

• Dinner with In-Laws: Half of the customers (53%) say they would rather have dinner with their in-laws than call customer support. (That could be painful, too!) 

• Glossophobia (The Fear of Public Speaking): Even though speaking in public is one of the greatest fears, often ahead of death, one in four customers (26%) would rather speak in front of an audience of 1,000 than call customer support. (Yikes, that’s scary!) 

But seriously … as humorous as some of these findings are, there’s some truth behind them. Consider a few more findings from this year’s report: 

• Half of U.S. customers (51%) say that when they call customer support with a question or to resolve a problem, the company does not value their time.  

• And speaking of respecting time, over half of the customers we surveyed (55%) say they stopped doing business with a company or brand because it kept them on hold for too long. 

• Six out of 10 customers (63%) say they have stopped doing business with a company because of the inability to connect with someone from customer support. 

It sounds like I’m being negative, but the reality is that this information gives me hope – for the companies that get it right. The more serious findings mean that more than half of customers are ripe to switch companies, and if you’re doing it right, they are hopefully going to switch to you.  

Whether your company has just a few dedicated employees to support your customers or a large contact center, this information and the opportunities we take from it are applicable to you. Your customers deserve attention and respect. Don’t make them feel as if their call is NOT very important to you!  

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.