Follow Up - Rewards Programs

After my previous post I needed to call back into Company A to ask them to do something (send me an email) that they has said they would do, but didn't.

I knew what I was getting myself into so I waited until I had a good gap between meetings and phone calls to call them. After failing the voice authentication again and waiting on hold for 18 minutes (yikes) I was able to get through to someone and have them send me the information I needed.

The interesting part was that I received a follow up questionnaire later that day from them asking questions about the last time that I called into their Contact Centre. These types of questionnaires are familiar to us all but I saw some unique opportunities within this particular one.

Some standard questioning about how everything went and what my customer service rep did and did not do was included. There was a heavy component on what is called advocacy questions -Would I recommend this service? Would I refer friends and family to this service? This type of questioning is used to develop the advocacy score - a common comparative measurement used to assess Customer Experience in a variety of industries - and is very useful.

There was some free-form space as well that allowed me to share my opinion (respectfully of course) of their voice-authentication and wait times.

The survey ended by asking me for my program number and email linked to the program for further follow up. I would normally not provide this information, but I believe that it provides company A with a unique opportunity.

They know I called them, they know who I am and they know what my impressions of the service are. By taking my direct feedback they should be able to link it to the information from my last call. From this they should be able to determine if my recollection of the call information (duration, authentication) was accurate.

Linking this information will allow them to see if the experience that their customers endure reflects what actually happened. Customer's impressions - and expectations - of certain services often vary widely from what they actually experienced. I knew I was going to be waiting long and was prepared for it, as a result I was not as outraged as I was the first time.