Since March 2020, how many times have you heard ‘due to Covid, we can’t do x, y and z’ or ‘there’s a delay due to Covid’? More than a handful, we bet, and over a year on, the excuse is starting to wear thin. Whilst Covid and its restrictions have seriously impacted people and businesses, UK consumers are fed up with brands STILL using Covid as an excuse for poor customer service.  

A recent UK study of 10,000 people (by the UK Institute of Customer Service) showed that a quarter of us said organisations had used Covid as an excuse for poor service, including late deliveries.

Jo Causon, the institute’s Chief Executive, stated that the crisis has “exposed” a lack of proper investment in service.

Increasing consumer demand, skills and people shortages and lack of proper investment in tech infrastructure have added an immense amount of pressure for companies walking the tight rope of pleasing customers whilst dealing with issues behind the scenes.  

And for what result? Complaints about customer service are at the highest level since 2009.  

In contrast to this, nearly a quarter of us have told a brand that we were happy with the service we received when we weren’t and well over half (55%) of us make excuses to end conversations with company representatives.  

So, what’s changed during the pandemic?

During just two weeks during the pandemic, the average company in a Harvard Business Review study saw the percentage of calls scored as ‘difficult’ more than double from a typical level of 10% to more than 20%.

Issues related to the pandemic dramatically increased the level of customer emotion and anxiety in service calls, making a job that is hard for reps on a ‘normal’ day far more challenging. In addition to this, teams were battling tech issues and working from home. The study showed ‘a massive uptick in instances of both customers and reps saying, “I can’t understand you,” and some companies in the study saw hold times balloon by as much as 34 percent and escalations (calls sent up the chain of command) skyrocket more than 68 percent’.

Where are brands going wrong?

Covering over the cracks

If your business has not got the right technology or systems in place, hasn’t got all the answers for customers, is running on less employees than is needed, and asking your customer-facing teams to do ‘their best’  – you’re creating a recipe for disaster. It’s time to realise the need for proper investment in the right tech, tools and staffing levels for teams to do their job properly.

Processes that help the company, not the customer

‘Due to our process…’ is probably one of the most irritating lines any customer can hear, with it instantly coming across as a get-out clause for anything slightly tricky, especially when said process does nothing to help a customer. Organisations shackle reps with standard customer-service policies (such as rules about extending bill payments) that pre-date the pandemic, and agents are often ‘powerless to help’. A study found that low-performing reps were 27% more likely to hide behind policy on Covid-19 related calls than their higher-performing peers.

The moral of the story is to update processes for the world we live in, giving agents the flexibility to amend based on the circumstances and thus adopting a customer-first approach.