Customer Service

Eight customer service blunders that businesses should avoid

Ignoring the priority of customers
Your staff should put the requirements of the customers and assisting them in achieving their objectives first. But occasionally, customer success managers (CSMs) put corporate development ahead of customer success, which is a common error in customer experience. While driving clients along the sales funnel may be advantageous for your business, it doesn’t encourage customer success and might turn customers off. It’s critical to show your consumers that you actually care about them and how your product or service may help them accomplish their goals in order to avoid making this error.

Example of MoviePass.
Customers of MoviePass, a subscription-based company, may see one film every day for just $10 per month. However, the firm discontinued its service and is unsure of its future when the Better Business Bureau received more than 1,500 complaints. One of the complaints that went viral was from a San Francisco client who had their account abruptly and without warning canceled. She subsequently found out that watching a “premium movie” violated the rules and conditions, resulting in the termination of her membership. This illustration shows how MoviePass put its own success above the comprehension of its customers and could have averted misunderstanding by being transparent about its policies from the beginning.

Not A CSM Leader Who Is Committed
An effective customer experience strategy requires strong CSM leadership. These team captains control team output and give CSMs the resources they need to help clients. It’s critical to choose the right leader for your company if you want it to expand.

American Airlines, for instance. When a traveler boarded an American Airlines aircraft, a flight attendant requested him or her to get off because the cello was thought to be “too big.” Due to a miscommunication, airport police later encircled the passenger. When it was eventually discovered that the airline’s regulations authorized the instrument, it was determined that the customer should have been able to board the original aircraft. This episode highlights how crucial it is to have a committed CSM leader who is knowledgeable about all processes, regulations, and rules and who can serve as a quick source of information when conflicts arise.

Lacking proactively serving customers
Together, customer success and support can deliver the finest experiences. They are essentially different, though. While customer success is proactive, looking to foresee and fix issues before they arise, customer support is reactive, responding to questions with responses. A solid customer success strategy is built on being proactive. Customers will feel appreciated if they receive regular communication, use conversational marketing techniques, and receive assistance along the way.

Example: An incident involving a phony Facebook account made by a user impersonating Target Target’s customer support team occurred. This impersonator made fun of clients who had issues with the business’s new gender-neutral signage. Target should have taken preventative action by designating customer service representatives to keep an eye on social media platforms and foresee what customers could say. They might not have been able to stop the bogus account from being made, but they could have been able to lessen the effects of the scenario with early discovery.

Over engaging Your Clientele
Even though interaction with clients is essential, going overboard with it can backfire and be more annoying than useful. Over-engagement frequently results from uncertainty, and CSMs attempt to get in touch with clients who are silent to make sure they aren’t experiencing any problems. To the detriment of other clients who might actually need assistance, this might result in time wastage. In order to avoid upsetting consumers or wasting agents’ time, finding the ideal engagement balance is crucial.

Comcast, for instance, In order to satisfy a customer’s demands, even account cancellation may be necessary. When a client wanted to discontinue their account, a Comcast agent tried to talk them out of it rather than help them with the cancellation procedure. This mistaken dedication to maintaining client engagement led to a bad experience and drew unfavorable media attention.

Setting ambiguous expectations
Customers will doubt your credibility if you make promises that are unattainable or impractical to fulfill. When you miss a deadline, it decreases trust in your capacity to produce on time. Customers can measure you by a standard that you set by having clear and attainable expectations. Customers will assume you either forgot about them or didn’t appreciate their demands if you offer something and then fail to fulfill. Customers should be quickly informed whenever you are unable to achieve a deadline or expectation in order to minimize this.

Company as in Amazon Unintentionally, a consumer on Amazon spent $88 on an item that really cost $7,455 to delivery. The order was not refunded by Amazon because it was delivered on time, despite several complaints and calling customer support. Before Amazon agreed to compensate the consumer, it took two and a half months and media coverage. Regardless matter how long a customer has been a client of your company, this occurrence emphasizes the value of continually offering excellent customer service.

Building silos for customer success
Silos in customer success develop when teams and departments don’t communicate goals and information, which impedes the delivery of seamless customer experiences. You cannot integrate customer data to understand how consumers benefit from your product, for instance, if sales, marketing, and customer success don’t communicate with one another. For the purpose of achieving corporate objectives and providing superior customer experiences, silo-busting through cross-functional collaboration is essential.

Company Illustration: Spectrum An internet-setup maintenance visit was scheduled by a Spectrum client. When the repair worker didn’t arrive, she called support, who informed her that the worker was on the way. When they couldn’t enter the building, the employee eventually departed. The next appointment was in 15 days, and she would still be charged, the consumer was informed when she phoned assistance once again. She terminated her subscription out of frustration and changed to a rival. This might have been avoided by coordinating the maintenance and customer care teams.

Generalizing specific client outcomes:
Customer experiences that are general undercut customization and fall short of satisfying their unique demands. client success depends heavily on treating each client result differently depending on their own goals and preferences. To provide individualized advise and quicker replies, make sure your staff has appropriate knowledge of each customer. You may also define customized KPIs in your CRM.

Samsung is one such business. client care was contacted by a Samsung client who needed to be home to sign for a parcel but couldn’t afford to leave work. Instead of rigorously sticking to business policy, the customer support agent ought to have taken the matter up with a management to discuss possible exceptions. Negative feedback on Reddit resulted from not meeting the customer’s demands.

Approaching consumers that Are a Bad match:

It is pointless to put time and effort into forming connections with consumers that are a bad match. Early detection and withdrawal from prospects who are a poor fit are crucial. To spot bad-fit prospects and stop them from becoming expensive clients, work closely with the sales and marketing departments.

Propose is a company example. The CEO of Proposify made the decision to “fire” a client who had a history of complaining about the program and making unreasonable requests. The CEO wrote a thorough email in which he admitted fault, apologized, offered a refund, and even provided alternatives from other companies. By taking this action, you won a devoted supporter who saw your commitment to the interests of the consumer.

Adopting a new customer success strategy takes work, but prioritizing customers, being proactive, keeping your word, dissolving silos, and investing in leadership are essential first steps.

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The Consequences of Four Notable Software Failure Cases

A computer and internet connectivity are all you need to build wonderful things, which is the beauty of software development.

Education, money, healthcare, communication, and other sides of our existence all show the importance of software. Software systems have a major flaw, even if they are good at computing vast and complicated data sets: they are made by people. We all commit errors as humans; there are plenty of them. Since faults and failures are inevitable in any software system, this is to be expected.

Our economy now depends on software systems so heavily that every failure of these systems has an impact on the economy. 3.6 billion individuals were impacted by software failure in 2017 and suffered financial losses of $1.7 trillion, according to a study conducted by the software testing company Tricentis [1].

In this essay, We will see instances of software failure and its ramifications to give you an understanding of the potential repercussions that may happen as a result.

St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital is the first case.

Picture receiving a letter from your hospital informing you that you passed away one morning when you checked your mailbox. The 8500 patients who received treatment at St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital between October 25 and December 11 experienced just that. How did it go?

Apparently, the hospital had just improved its patient-management software. Nevertheless, a mapping mistake in the program caused the system to issue a number of 20 (which signifies “expired”) instead of 01, which indicated the patient had been discharged. But it doesn’t stop there. Incorrect information was given to insurance providers, the neighborhood Social Security office, and patients as well. How [2] is done is unclear.

 

National Health Service, the second instance

Neither not taking your medications at all nor taking the incorrect drug is better, in my opinion. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, a software flaw caused at least 300,000 cardiac patients to receive the incorrect medication or advice. What then occurred?

SystmOne, a clinical computer program, was found to have a flaw in 2016 that had been causing it to calculate patients’ risk of heart attacks incorrectly since 2009 (see also: 2016). Due to the fact that many patients were assured they were at minimal risk, many experienced heart attacks or strokes, while others experienced unwanted side effects from taking medicine that wasn’t necessary [3].

 

Third instance: LAX airport air traffic control

The crucial duty of alerting pilots of aircraft of the pertinent information on weather, routes, the distance between other aircraft, and other matters falls to air traffic control. It might be disastrous if you don’t get in touch with the pilots of your aircraft right away.

Air traffic control at the Los Angeles airport lost vocal connection with 400 or more aircraft on September 14, 2004, at about 5 PM, when many of the aircraft were en route to one another in the southwest of the United States. How did it go? Unexpectedly, the principal voice communication system was turned off. A few minutes after it was switched on, the backup system also failed, which was the cherry on top.

The communication system’s internal millisecond timer, which runs continuously, was the root of the issue. It would shut off once it hit zero since it was unable to clock itself. Over 800 aircraft were impacted nationwide by the outage [4].

 

4th instance: Toyota

Many Toyota owners complained that towards the middle of the 2000s, their cars would accelerate without them having to press the accelerator. Investigators learned that software problems were to blame for the unexpected acceleration following a string of incidents that prompted inquiries.

In this instance, the software in Toyota automobiles had a number of flaws, including memory corruption, improper memory handling, the disabling of safety features, single point of failure systems, and hundreds of global variables. Millions of Toyota automobiles were recalled, and a month after the root of the issue was found, the stock price of Toyota dropped by 20%.

In this instance, the need to release the product quickly shows the costs of not paying enough attention to testing and sound programming techniques.

 

Conclusion

Various instances of software failure and their effects were investigated in this article. These incidents show how dependent our society is on software and how when it malfunctions, there may be ramifications beyond just the financial ones.

Software systems will include flaws and be vulnerable to failure as long as people are involved in the development process. As programmers, it is our duty to make sure that the systems we created have undergone extensive testing in a variety of accurate and realistic circumstances. In order to make sure that the program we are advertising may truly benefit its users rather than hurt them, this is necessary.

A lot of times, introducing an unproven and incomplete product is driven by competition and the desire to be the first to market. As software users, it is our duty to use the tools we employ to assist our actions rather than slavishly following whatever advice or outcomes they may provide.

 

References

[1] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/report-software-failure-caused-1-7-trillion-in-financial-losses-in-2017/
[2] http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Networks-and-Storage/Hospital-Revives-Its-QTEDeadQTE-Patients
[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3585149/Up-300-000-heart-patients-given-wrong-drugs-advice-major-NHS-blunder.html
[4] http://www.cse.psu.edu/~gxt29/bug/softwarebug.html

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The Story of the Failure of a Software Company

There once existed a software business called InnovateTech. It all started with a group of enthusiastic and gifted people who had a goal to develop ground-breaking software solutions. They set out with high expectations and lofty objectives, but they ran across a number of obstacles along the way that finally brought about their demise.

InnovateTech first concentrated on creating a ground-breaking product that they thought would revolutionize the market. They put a lot of effort and money into research and development, striving for excellence. They concentrated all of their efforts on developing the ideal product, but they overlooked other vital facets of managing a prosperous software company.

Challenge 1: Insufficient market research and comprehension

InnovateTech didn’t carry out adequate market research or comprehend the requirements and preferences of their intended market. They believed that their novel solution would instantly draw clients, but they soon discovered that their offering did not meet the needs of the market. Low consumer uptake and little market penetration were the results of this lack of market understanding.

Challenge 2: Poor project management and communication

The business has issues with team communication and project management. Due to ineffective coordination and weak processes, deadlines were missed and deliverables were behind schedule. Collaboration was hampered by unclear communication routes, which left team members perplexed and frustrated. Their software’s quality worsened as a result, which caused unhappy customers and unfavorable evaluations.

Challenge 3: Poor client relationship management

InnovateTech failed to build trusting client connections and manage client expectations successfully. They struggled to comprehend and meet the needs of their clients because they lacked a focused client management approach. As a result, they had trouble keeping clients happy and obtaining long-term contracts, which hurt their reputation and revenue.

Challenge 4: Lack of Innovation and Adaptability

InnovateTech failed to adapt to changing market conditions and new technological developments. Due to their complacency with their current offering, they neglected to make necessary improvements in order to stay competitive. They lost market share and customers due to their incapacity to develop and provide new features or solutions.

Outcome and Lessons Learned:

Despite having a strong staff and an original idea, InnovateTech failed for a number of reasons.

  • Ignoring market research and consumer knowledge may result in the creation of items that don’t satisfy client needs.
  • Poor project management and communication can cause internal chaos, missed deadlines, and subpar products.
  • Poor client relationship management can result in unhappy clients, lower retention rates, and a detrimental effect on sales.
  • In a market that is evolving quickly, failing to innovate and adapt might result in obsolescence and a loss of market share.

Software firms may learn a lesson from the narrative of InnovateTech. It focuses on how crucial it is to perform market research, set up efficient project management and communication procedures, give client relationship management first priority, and promote an innovative and adaptable culture. Software firms may aim for success and steer clear of the traps that could cause failure by taking note of these lessons.

 

Author: K M Hasan Ripon, Executive Director, BSDI