The customer service experience is a vital cog for any business, but how vital is it?

HubSpot research says, “83% of companies that believe it’s important to make customers happy also experience growing revenue.

In such a hyper-competitive business era, it is important to know the consequences of bad customer service interactions and the benefits of an efficiently functioning customer support department.

Good customer service and business success are closely associated.

Understanding what good customer service is and how it is closely associated with the overall business helps companies build strong client relationships.

When businesses slide on their service standards, they face negative consequences with serious repercussions for the overall business.

What Is Bad Customer Service? 

Bad customer service can be defined as when a business fails to meet customer expectations in terms of service quality, response time, or overall customer experience. The factors that have a negative effect on customer service are inefficient support staff, a lack of real-time support, or an inability to understand your customers needs.

Poor customer service not only worsens existing customer relationships but also endangers potential opportunities and obviously erodes the bottom line of your business. Research by Microsoft states, “58% of consumers choose to switch companies because of poor customer service experience.”

Good Customer Service Vs Bad Customer Service

Good Customer Service	Bad Customer Service
Responding quickly to a customer’s questions, issues, and feedback is essential to providing good customer service.	Bad customer service often involves delayed or non-responsive interactions, leaving customers feeling ignored or undervalued.
Good customer service really speaks for itself. It is when you answer one of the top customer experience questions to deliver a higher level of satisfaction offered by the company.	Bad customer service results in clients’ dissatisfaction and a negative customer experience.
They actively work to resolve customer issues.	When customer concerns are not effectively addressed or resolved, it causes disloyalty
Customers are treated with empathy in good customer service.	Unwillingness to assist can frustrate customers.
Customers can receive accurate information and helpful support from good customer service personnel .	Rudeness, impatience, or insulting language, which can give customers a bad opinion of the business.

How Does Poor Customer Service Affect Your Business?

According to the report by WalkerInfo, customer experience will outshine price and product as the key brand differentiators by 2023. The customer experience (CX) continues to be a decisive factor for many customers. It is important for businesses to understand how a poor service experience would impact their overall brand.

Here are the implications of bad customer service:

• Increase Churn Rate – When you deliver a great experience, customers will return to you, and on the contrary, substandard service will encourage them to churn. A single instance of bad customer service is enough to make you switch to a new company. 
• Affect Brand Loyalty –  Customer loyalty is a strong predictor of a business’s long-term viability because loyal customers are durable. Poor customer service affects customer lifetime value (CLTV) as customers leave after a negative customer support experience. Loyalty and brand image are interrelated, and losing loyal customers affects the overall brand.
• Higher Customer Service Costs–  Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one. When customer service standards decline, the number of touchpoints increases, which has a drastic impact on customer service costs.

Top Reasons For Bad Customer Service Examples (And How to Fix Them)

What are the reasons that may label businesses with the worst customer service tag? Let us go into detail and discuss the “how-tos” that businesses can practice in order to fix bad customer service experiences.

1.Fail To Offer Real-Time Support

Let’s assume an example to understand “Fail to offer real-time support” more clearly:

“A telecommunications company has subscribed to Chat bot communication platform for their internal team collaboration and customer support. They encounter an urgent technical issue where their team is unable to communicate, severely impacting their ability to assist customers and conduct business.” 

The telecommunications company contacts the help line provided by the Chatbot company  and immediately contacts customer service for urgent assistance. However, they have to wait a long time before speaking with a support representative, adding to their anger in this urgent scenario.

 When the support agent finally answers the phone, they express regret for the trouble but inform telecommunications that they must follow the usual support ticket process. The representative encourages the company to send an email outlining the problem in detail or open a support request through the web portal.

Customers expect real-time responses. Hubspot research says, “90% of customers rate “immediate response” as very important when they have queries”. It means the response time of the channels you provide should be reasonable. 

Businesses that focus on delivering 24×7 real-time support increase customer satisfaction, which drives revenue and builds loyalty. Live chat and chatbots are the best communication channels when it comes to delivering real-time support.

With live chat, businesses can deliver real-time support to customers. It helps to initiate a proactive chat with website visitors & customers to provide the right guidance, stuck on a specific page on your website.

You can automate your conversations to deliver 24×7 engagement to customers when your support team is busy or not available. AI chatbots can answer FAQs promptly and improve customer satisfaction rates. 

How To Fix It?

• You can use live chat to offer real-time sales and support assistance to customers. It means more sales conversion and higher retention. It also improves customer satisfaction and cultivates loyalty.
• You can engage your customers 24×7 by chatbots. They are always available to answer simple queries, which reduces the number of support requests and improves team productivity.
• You can also combine both channels and deliver hybrid support to your customers. Use bots as the first point of contact to answer simple queries. The queries that need human support can be directed to live agents. You can witness improved customer satisfaction rates by giving customers the best of both worlds.

2.Fail To Resolve In The First Touchpoint

Firstly, we can illustrate an example of  “Fail to resolve in the first touchpoint.”

“Sam purchases a smartphone from a popular e-commerce platform  and receives the delivery within the expected timeframe. However, upon opening the package, he discovers that the phone’s screen is cracked, rendering it unusable.”

Through the hotline number provided by the company, the consumer calls customer service and describes the problem with the cracked screen. The customer service representative apologizes for the inconvenience and pledges to fix the problem. However, the representative advises the customer that they will need to start a return procedure and sends them an email with advice on how to do so, rather than offering an immediate fix.

 The lack of quick assistance and solutions has disappointed the client. Given that they received a damaged product, they expected that the problem would be fixed immediately. They feel that company is not taking their complaint seriously, and having to go through a return process adds to their frustration.

One of the principles of customer service is a faster solution at the first contact point. When the customer issue is identified in the first contact, not only is the resolution faster, but the number of touchpoints is reduced. 

For identifying the problems in the first contact, visual engagement tools play a very important role. Gaining a visual understanding of the issue helps you offer a concrete solution and improve customer satisfaction.

By using live engagement tools such as co-browsing and video chat, businesses can improve one of the key metrics, i.e., average resolution time. These tools help your business reverse from bad customer service to good customer service. 

REVE Chat offers a complete toolkit of digital customer engagement tools, such as co-browsing, and video chat. Sign up with REVE Chat and collaborate with customers in real-time and resolve their issues in the first contact.

Key Takeaways:

• With co-browsing, collaborate with your customers’ screens in real-time, know where exactly the customer is facing the issue, and help complete the complex process or fill out the form much faster.
• Have direct conversations with agents via video chat to help them understand the problem with clarity, which further helps them deliver the right solutions in the first contact itself. You can deliver technical support and the best virtual in-person experience.
• With live engagement tools, deliver faster solutions with interactive and personalized communication. It has led to a significant increase in customer satisfaction.
• You can use live engagement tools to greatly increase your team’s productivity and deliver a good customer service experience.

3. Inefficient Customer Support Team

“Raha has placed an Amazon order for a book. She discovered that the book was different from the one she had ordered when she opened the package. When she contacted the support team regarding the issue, they provided her with insufficient and false information.”

Customers frequently receive false or sparse information from support staff when they do receive a response, which adds to their irritation. To receive a thorough and accurate response to their questions, customers may need to contact the support team more than once, adding extra delay and annoyance.

A dedicated support team is a source of great pride for any business. Not having a competent team can create the worst customer service examples.

If your business is missing out on this factor, it might not be able to offer proactive support, therefore losing loyal customers, deflecting brand reputation, and leading to more customer complaints. This brings out the vitality of a knowledgeable and competent support team.

While hiring new support reps, follow the below tips:

• Make the new hires aware of the importance of achieving a high level of customer experience.
• Maintain transparency as part of your customer service in the higher education training module. When you are transparent with your team about the goals, they will put their best efforts into meeting customer service needs and expectations.

How To Fix It?

• Regular training about products and etiquette should be for all employees. It should be consistent across all departments and teams.
• You can share all the important business information with the whole support team to make them aware of the issues and solutions.

4. Lack Of Customer Service Etiquette

“Richard visits a Walmart store  to purchase toys for her child. As he approached the sales associate, they were met with a disinterested and dismissive attitude. The sales associate barely makes eye contact, and when he asks any question, the associates respond with a curt and impatient tone. The salesperson appears more engaged in chatting with a close coworker than carefully listening to the customer’s needs and providing helpful information. An unfavorable impression of the store and its customer service is created when the customer feels disregarded and undervalued.”

The lack of proper customer service etiquette in the store makes the customer feel uncomfortable and undervalued. It lessens their motivation to purchase something and has a negative effect on their shopping experience as a whole. The client is likely to complain to friends and family about their unpleasant experience, which could discourage others from going to the store and harm its standing in the neighborhood.

Serve your customers with a pleasing smile. Does it really happen the way it is said?

It is crucial for the support team to have the right skills and etiquette to use powerful phrases for effective customer service. It reduces the negative impact of customer support and helps build great success stories.

Here are the key areas of customer service skills

Practice Clear Communication

You should convey to customers what you actually mean. Provide authentic information related to products and services to avoid future confusion among customers. Know your brand’s offers and discounts prior to offering them to customers to maintain brand efficiency.

Understand Customer Psychology

Customers expect businesses to listen to their problems, value them, and offer prompt solutions. Businesses that focus on understanding the psychology of customers provide a higher level of intuitive support and have better customer satisfaction.

Use positive scripts and phrases

You should design customer service scripts based on the scenarios where agents have to address customers. Positive chat transcripts and phrases can help deliver faster responses and a consistent brand experience.

Set The Right Expectations 

You should not be over-promising to your customers, especially about things that you cannot fulfill. Saying ‘yes’ to everything that your customer demands leads to dissatisfied customers when you turn out. So, don’t make fake commitments and set customer expectations that will break their trust and loyalty.

Key Takeaways:

• You should train your customer support team to be realistic and say yes to the practical demands of customers. This leads to the right expectations and, hence, makes the customer experience better. 
• Proper training in customer service skills and etiquette will build up a dedicated team that will improve your brand’s reputation and increase customer loyalty.

5. Not Measuring Your Customer Service

“Mahi purchased handmade jewelry from a small online business that sells handmade products through its website. The business owner believes that their products speak for themselves. However, they never implement any formal method of measuring customer service or collecting feedback from their customers.”

Customers who order things from the internet receive them without any significant problems. However, because there is no system in place for customers to provide feedback, the owner of the company is unable to determine whether customers are happy with their entire purchasing experience, the shipping procedure, or the standard of service offered.

By not assessing customer service, the company loses out on insightful information and the potential for development. They have no method of figuring out prospective trouble spots or places where clients might be having problems. Without feedback, the owner of the business is oblivious to any potential client problems and powerless to prevent them.

Measuring customer service quality is one of the most vital aspects of every business. If ignored, it can have a terrible impact on your business. Companies that miss out on measuring customer service fail to gain the following benefits:

• Do not get insights into how your business is performing
• Unable to know your customers’ perception of your products & services
• Not able to identify the gaps between business and customers.

Thus, it negatively impacts your business’s ability to achieve complete success in team productivity, customer satisfaction, and retention.

This shows how critical it is to define customer service KPIs and measure them regularly. 

The metrics are the performance measurements used by the support teams to monitor, analyze, and take necessary actions to enhance customer service success.

Here are the key KPIs & metrics to measure customer service satisfaction

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – The CSAT score tells you how satisfied customers are with your business. You directly ask your customers to rate their satisfaction with your products and services.
• Average Response Time (ART): It measures the time between the customer initiating the chat and the agent responding to it. It is a very important KPI for customer service to consider for performance evaluation, as it is one of the main customer complaints. 
• First Contact Resolution (FCR): FCR measures the efficiency of your customer support team to fix an issue on the first call. It indicates how capable your agents are of understanding and resolving the issue at the first touchpoint.
• A number of touchpoints – It measures the total number of return interactions made by the customer to get the right solution for the same issue.

How To Fix It?

• The higher the CSAT score, the better is customer satisfaction. You can collect feedback in real-time like just after purchase, to know what is or is not working.
• In order to reduce your response time, you must either scale your support agents or use chatbots. Bots can handle the basic queries 24×7 when the agents are not available, which reduces the number of support tickets.

6. Not Taking Customer Feedback Regularly 

“When Rifat goes to a restaurant, their food is not as good as they expected. He doesn’t get the burger they ordered, and the fries are overcooked and cold. He is also dissatisfied with the restaurant’s general cleanliness and level of service. He decides to give feedback on the food he consumed after leaving the restaurant. He hunts for a link to a survey or feedback form on the receipt or the restaurant’s website, but none is present. He searches online but is unable to locate an easy way to provide feedback.”

Here, the restaurant misses out on important insights about customer experiences and potential areas for improvement since it doesn’t consistently solicit customer input. They are still not aware of the particular problems that caused the unhappy patron’s bad dining experience.

Have you been bothered to know whether your customers are happy with your service quality, products, or overall brand? If not, you are missing out on a key element that results in poor customer service examples – i.e. Customer 

Feedback As it said,  “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Customer feedback is a vital ingredient for the success of every business.

How To Fix It?

• Practice collecting customer feedback regularly. It will give a clear view of how your business is performing. You can identify the gaps between the customers and the business and end up with a product that is sheer perfection. It also opens up a conversation with customers and develops a long-lasting relationship.
• You can ask for feedback right after a customer service conversation, after a product demo, or after a successful transaction. In order to value customer feedback and make it effective, you have to analyze and act upon it. 
• Collect feedback from customers on a regular basis. Further, categorize it and share it with the respective departments to work on it.
• Make a plan of action by consolidating all the results. Train your support team to ask the right feedback questions at the right time via the right channels.

7. Not Using The Right Tools

“During a major sales event, Flipkart experiences a surge in website traffic and a high volume of orders from customers looking to take advantage of the discounts. Customers are disappointed with their shopping experience on Flipkart’s website during the sale.”

However, their website infrastructure is not equipped to handle such a heavy load, leading to slow page load times and frequent crashes. Flipkart receives negative publicity as a result of the website performance problems that occurred during the sale event, which were covered in the media and shared on social media. Customers could think less favorably of the business and think it is unreliable or unequipped to deal with busy periods.

While customer service vs. customer experience is a topic we discuss endlessly, we forget that one of the most important aspects of good customer service is using the right tools. The tools help reduce the negative impact of support. When you equip your business with the right tools, it can benefit your business in the following ways:

• Helps to improve your team productivity 
• Make better communication with customers
• Gain valuable insights about your customer journey 
• Boost customer satisfaction 

Some tools that you can use to deliver a better customer experience are:

Customer Engagement Tools– Give your agents an omnichannel engagement platform to learn more about their journey and deliver a consistent real-time service experience across all channels by using tools like live chat, co-browsing, and video chat.

Feedback Tools – Use NPS or CSAT surveys to measure customer satisfaction. The resulting score determines the level of satisfaction of your customers and highlights the areas that need improvement.

How To Fix It?

• Identify your business needs and select the right tools to ensure a higher level of customer engagement and better customer satisfaction.
• Use your customer feedback to improve products and services to match customer expectations. Also, make them feel like an important part of your business.

Final Thoughts On Bad Customer Service

Bad customer service is detrimental to any business. However, if your business is customer-centric, delivering a better customer experience becomes the ultimate objective for your organization. By becoming CX’s first brand, you not only eliminate the negative impact of customer service but also build lifelong customer relationships and brand loyalty.

REVE Chat provides an automated customer service platform that allows your business to deliver real-time sales/support assistance. Sign up today and empower your support team to deliver a great customer service experience.