OK, call me a Luddite if you will, but I’ve never been a fan of auto-attendant answering systems. Currently I’m on hold to cancel a hotel reservation (they give me no way to do it online), and I’ve heard the phrase, “Your Call is Very Important to Us” for the fourteenth time. I’m beginning to think that my call isn’t important to them at all.
Who is my call important to? Well, let’s see. I’ve never called Southwest Airlines without getting a live person to answer. Of course everyone knows about my loyalty to, and evangelizing for, Southwest. There are other companies, too – all of whom care enough to have a live person to answer my call (or at least keep me on hold for less than the seven minutes that this hotel has).
I seldom go to a conference where I don’t hear complaints about “The Amazon Effect;” i.e. customers who seek out the absolute lowest price online without regard to service….and yet, when I call many of those same companies, I get….an autoattendant who reassures me every 30 seconds or so how important my call is. BS. If my call – or anyone’s call – was important, you’d have a person answering it.
Bottom line – if you do in fact have an autoattendant, please respect your customers’ intelligence enough to NOT have the ‘your call is important to us’ message. Say something else – because by the 15th repetition or so, it’s just irritating and a reminder of how UNimportant the phone calls are.
On the other hand, if you want to fight the Amazon Effect, then dazzle people with service from the beginning (meaning the very first encounter they have with your company). Have a live, competent, courteous, and friendly person answering the telephone. Online, have a chatbot manned (or womanned) by a live person ready to help. Respond to emails and texts quickly. That’s how you let customers know that they really are important to you.
