Top Reasons Why Customers Hate Automated Phone Systems

Why Customers Hate Automated Phone Systems

The telephone is the most important tool to render top-of-the-line support to customers. According to the Forrester research, there is 69% of U.S. people who still use the phone to contact customer care executive for support. 

In this modern era where customers need instant support, service expectation goes to higher level which makes customers difficult to please. Another report published by Forrester states that “they are habituated to more options, high level of control and accessibility, and a worldwide platform to tell others what they think about the brand and its products/services.” There is no surprising thing that only 37% of businesses were rated with the tag of good or excellent in “The Customer Experience Index 2012.”

Calling a customer care agent in a call centre is a nightmare to customers, so let’s figure out what are the topmost reasons that make customers hate automated phone systems.

Phone menu: The issue with the phone menu i.e. IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is that people hate calling to a contact centre. Customers facing troubles want to speak to a human agent, rather than get stuck with the phone menu. IVR systems comprised of the lengthy procedure to follow and it is always annoying. It basically drives people frustrated as they don’t get the appropriate solution what they are looking for. A poorly designed phone menu can make callers disappointed and leads to hop over other counterparts.  So, this is the major problem faced by callers to reach the right agent and get the solution.

Hold times: Another major problem that make the callers frustrated is the long hold time. According to a study, it has found that American callers have wasted over 60 million valuable hours waiting on hold to get connected with the right agent. To be true, hold times is a killer to our most precious commodity–time. Customers get pissed off when they kept on hold for the long time. Well, it’s a human nature to get things done quickly. This is also the major issue that leads customers unhappy.

So, just how big is this issue?

Do you know social media channels are swarming with frustrated or disappointed customers emitting their displeasure? For any contact centre or business providing customer support services, these are some major issues to fix and make customer contended. An efficient call answering service with human support is the secret to take the customer experience to the next level. Hence, choose call answering service where a human agent provides support to customers instead of automated phone menu.