Kelly Cowburn
Jun 13

Customer Service And The Human Touch

The average adult picks up their phone 1500 times a week and spends anywhere between 3 to 5 hours a day online. How often do you pick up your phone in a day? Be honest! What tasks do you do online because it’s easier, quicker, simpler? What do you do online that would take much longer if you had to make a phone call, or even leave the sofa? What else do you do online to while away your time?

Imagine life without smartphones and tablets; it’s hard to envisage, isn’t it?

We live in a fast-paced, super-connected world. Digitising customer service has undoubtedly made our lives easier, especially for simple tasks such as viewing statements, making payments, or ordering something. Many organisations have offered an omnichannel customer service for quite some time now, and AI is making digital customer service even more sophisticated. But what does this mean as we continue to advance in this digital era?

Research from HubSpot shows that organisations providing a way for customers to interact directly and human-to-human achieved much more significant growth than those that didn’t. Interestingly, although we spend so much time online, 52% of customers surveyed by HubSpot said that they want to deal directly with another human being again. This isn’t surprising when you consider the fact that humans are hardwired to connect with others. We are inherently social animals!

Moreover, a recent global study by PwC revealed that 59% of consumers feel that organisations are losing the human touch. When something goes wrong, we just want to speak to a human being rather than fight our way through an automated process supported by a faceless chatbot.

So what does 'human touch' mean in customer service? It means:

  • We want to be listened to.
  • We want to be acknowledged.
  • We want help when things go wrong.
  • We want a personal experience.
  • We want someone to understand us and empathise with us.
  • We want to feel connected in a human way.

There may come a time when we can't tell the difference between an AI-generated Customer Service avatar and a real human being, but one thing is for sure, right now customers want a hybrid approach to customer service. They want to be online for speed and simplicity, but they also want to engage with a 'real' human being when they need the personal touch. Considering that 95% of customers say that customer service is a key driver to their loyalty to an organisation, and 60% of customers switch to a competitor after a poor experience, it’s essential to get it right.

Our GREAT Customer Service course is about getting the emotional connection right, whatever channel you use to interact with your customers. We use the tried and tested GREAT framework, which provides a structure for emotionally connected, loyalty-inspiring, trust-building customer interactions:

GREET – A warm welcome, building trust from the beginning – “I’m here for you.”
RECOGNISE NEEDS – Recognising what the customer really needs – “I will help you.”
EMPATHISE – Displaying genuine empathy and attuning to the customer – “I understand you.”
ACT – Acting with accountability and owning the customer’s issue – “This is what I’ll do…”
THANK – Thanking with sincerity and ending on a high – “I’m happy I could help you today.”

References:
    • HubSpot, ‘Hybrid customer experience in a post-pandemic world: Where do we stand on the Human Touch?’, 2021
    • PWC, ‘Experience is everything: Here’s how to get it right’, 2018