It’s a strange world when the predicted snowpocalypse under-delivers and people are all like WTF, snow? WTF? But that’s Rochester, New York. We were expecting a foot. We got four inches. School was canceled anyway. And everyone’s all shaking their fists at the sky goin’ “Zat all you got? Huh? You ain’t so bad! C’mon!”
I negotiated the snow like a champ. I should. I learned how to drive in Kent, Ohio. If you don’t know how to drive in it there you will spend a significant amount of your driving life upside down in a ditch. Funny. A few years ago when I was leaving here for there, following a fierce all-night snowstorm, I saw this dude who had overturned his Jeep. He was standing beside his car with the most befuddled look on his face. I mean, he had managed to leave the vehicle. But it was upside-down. It was beautiful.
I was asked before the storm hit (by my dear Mom) if we had plenty of provisions for the storm. Mom. This house has a chest freezer full of deer meat and a bottle of bourbon. What else could we need?
Anyway. So here’s the article I’m crowing about this morning:
According to research firm Gartner, 65 percent of self-service interactions currently escalate beyond the Web to an agent. In other words, a customer has come to your website and is unable to complete his or her transaction, and thus needs to call your organization for help.
At my previous job, I’d estimate the rate was more like 85 percent. Or worse. And this was true of pretty much every interactive portal we provided—the membership directory, the online store, the authentication. Everything. I considered it my primary professional mission to solve this problem. Had a little trouble getting the rest of the place on board with that, unfortunately. But, I really appreciated this blog post because it does an excellent job at identifying the problem, at providing it a nomenclature. The “interaction escalates beyond the Web to an agent.” I like that.
Interactive pages that require that the user make a follow-up phone call = epic fail. Such pages should work flawlessly and provide a seamless customer service experience or said organization should throw away that system with the coffee grounds and start over, and it should make said renewal its top priority.