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The perspective of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd support lines? Why closing faster/earlier in the process pays-off?
Let’s begin with numbers. A major software testing organisation, tricentis.com released a report in 2017, highlighting the cost of software failure losses that amounted to US$1.7 trillion (that was up from US$1.1 trillion in 2016.). You can imagine what that might be now. Between the reports of another major test organisation and the Tricentis report there were approximately 364 companies that affected over 4.4 billion people and a downtime of over 315 years, now that’s some staggering numbers.
According to the blog on “What is the cost of a bug?”, published by Rafaela Azevedo, a leading automation leadership voice - “if a bug is found in the requirements-gathering phase, the cost could be $100. If the product owner doesn’t find that bug until the QA testing phase, then the cost could be $1500. If it’s not found until production, the cost could be $10,000.”
Let’s look at it from the perspective of a simple online shopping experience. The other day my friend was on the phone with one of the customer executives, looking very frustrated. He had ordered an item from their website and even paid for it, but the item had not been delivered yet and the site order history was showing incorrect status further adding to the frustration. He had also submitted an online complaint but had not received any response from their customer support, despite the fact that a contact with their bot and FAQ guaranteed a response time of 24 hours. Furthermore, money was deducted from the bank account and there was no way of retrieving the transaction.
Like my friend, there are many of us who at some point in our lives have faced bad digital customer service experiences and many continue to do so with no clarity to the business side on hazards of broken customer journey and software bugs that cause user frustrations . Be it forgetting to deliver an order, late delivery, zero calls unanswered, incorrect app information, errors in transaction (bugs), and no replies to the numerous messages and emails one sends to the support system at all levels are cost implications to any organisation. This is true for a variety of digital businesses from B2BC to B2B and B2X2Y businesses.
All stakeholders involved in the production environment, support ecosystem and the experience strategy add to the cost of reaching a product or service in the hands of the end customers. Any bugs therefore are costly over time. Any company or brands out there, who are offering their product and services to an end consumer, must make sure that they cater to the needs of their customers. Because the most vital point of any company is their attitude, empathy and the way they handle the customer’s needs and grievances. The quicker the responding time, the happier they and their customers will be. Customers form a company’s backbone and the source of all sales and revenues. In my own experience while working at a major hardware tech company, though the product was well received in the market, the support costs punched a hole through the roof, e.g. a $50 dollar product cost $20 per resolution at the call center, 3 calls were enough to kill all levels of profitability.
What exactly are customer service, customer experience and customer responding time?
In simple words, customer service is defined as the services offered by a company to a customer to assist them in resolving their problems whereas customer experience is referred to as the interaction between a customer and the company and what their viewpoint and perspective are towards them.
Customer response time is the time taken by the customer executive(s) or digital CX services to help customers sort out their problems. In the background is the developer team, program costs and actual time costs to resolve the problem reported.
How can companies solve the problems of the customers as quickly as possible?
In today’s world, customer experience is of great importance. Every company’s foundation is built on the client experience. Without it, no business can survive at all. Nowadays, customers give more preference to quality than quantity. Any kind of unsatisfactory results will drive all of them away. So, the question arises as to “How might companies improve the way they can identify problems, resolve and get the engines rolling back on the road.?”
Software testers, 1st line unit testing skips by dev teams, overconfidence in lines of codes, tools missing test case metrics even with the best of automations have resulted in aggregating towards the losses. Customer servicing takes a lot of time, but digitally that’s possible at scale and with tools like Omniscopy it can even cut across the portfolio of products and services to have real-time bug identification, live documentation and fixes with minimal teams and quicker actions. Further, in order to achieve brand loyalty and the desired results, here are four simple strategies to follow:
- Clarity of Communication
Communication is the ultimate key to a better relationship between teams that work together in finding and fixing errors and ultimately building a robust solution with minimal downtime. Efficiency starts from the 1st line to identify and fix problems in the production environment. Any type of miscommunication can slip the bug through from 1st line to 2nd and 3rd, escalating to the costs incurred in resolution. It’s a vicious circle. As this is very crucial, how does one resolve the 1st line of communication? Take Omniscopy as an example for tighter collaboration and communication at a unit test level on production level where a business can have a “sniper” sharp assessment of customer journeys, target and find errors in the bargain on any events and a live region and business wide communication to fix errors before they become catastrophes.
- Instant Response Time
According to a recent survey in 2021, the research stated that more than 1000 companies take almost 12 hours, 10 minutes for a customer executive to resolve the needs of a customer. This time duration is snail pace compared to the demands of the digital era. This can lead to a loss of revenue in tens of millions for the companies, moreover the loss of a customer to competition. Every member of the business teams in the front end and those in the production environment need to be on high alert, especially in the digital realm making sure that they track, respond, communicate and resolve problems earlier in the timelines then to push it to level 2 and 3 line of support.
- The customer is the only first priority
‘The Customer is king/queen’ is an age-old business mantra that has been going on for millennials. This means that professional and high-quality service should be provided to them at all times where they are not disappointed. Involving key production environment decision makers and program owners upto the support teams to view customer pain point, struggles with bugs and software glitches first hand will build the connect and reduce passing bugs due to oversight or a tick mark on functionality completed. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep customer in mind as the first priority
- Training Employees towards digital service priority
Professional training should be provided to all the employees working in the digital support or servicing area, as they directly impact the outcomes on cost of production. The teams must be trained to avoid bugs slippages due to process and irrelevant protocols. Employees can be trained to handle interaction emails, calls, texts and messages via social media or through their online channels as an expert business owner, backed by the power of Omniscopy to resolve real time technical or business anomalies with instant experience rectification. This will ensure the smooth running of the digital business of any company.
Even if the initial cost of a first line might look high at the beginning of a project, the cost comes down over time, enabling user fandom and satisfaction. Finally it is proven over time that just as traditional industry would fix the issues in the manufacturing line of business processes likewise a digital product or solution must adopt planned and timely assessment and fixes to problems identified within the production environment.
Business’s need to focus on digital well-being is more important each day and traditional methods of cost reductions in the production environment don’t cut in any more. The cost of the problem in Production environments using the 1st, 2nd and 3rd support lines is significant in the absence of automated CX UX journey tracking and secure digital behavioral analytics to serve better, close faster.