The Psychology of Bad Service: How to Defuse Frustration

We want to know that the person on the other side of the phone is someone we can trust to respond appropriately to our needs. In fact, good customer service is so impactful that consultancy firm PwC confirmed that over half of customers believe it to be a primary driver in brand trust. With that in mind, how do you ensure your customers never have a poor customer service experience with you when they get in touch?

With a telematics solution, that assurance can be vital, as a bad experience could hamper your ability to see and control your fleet. So, keep reading to learn Centris’ response to this and how companies like ours offer strategies for smoother customer service. Uncover practical techniques to calmly handle bad service experiences so tempers do not fray, and you can maintain the customer’s loyalty to your brand.

The Psychology of Poor Customer Service and Customer Frustration

A bad customer service experience is such a powerfully adverse event that it can quickly escalate from simply trying to get someone to understand your position to extreme frustration. Not only does it impact your sense of control, but it can also feel like you are being misunderstood or insulted if the other person does not feel they are treating you as a human. In many cases, this can be exacerbated if you intuit that the other person is running from a script rather than handling you in a manner tailored to your situation.

Things can quickly boil over in a high-pressure environment, such as when managing a fleet or during an emergency. When that occurs, customer attitudes, even your own, can often shift from neutral to negative and quickly worsen a bad situation.

Primary Customer Dissatisfaction Effects

There may be many specific things that can cause this. However, some of the most common include:

• Repeatedly being put on hold
• Being on hold for extreme lengths of time
• Answering the same question repeatedly in different customer service areas
• Meeting obstacles to communication or processing an otherwise simple request
• Limitations of the capabilities of those conducting customer service
• Contacting an outsourced contact center that feels poor-quality

The impact of customer service calls like this can create a sense of uncertainty and anxiety, especially if time-sensitive events occur. For example, if you lose track of a vehicle or if you learn of a major collision on a road that you need to divert your fleet away from.

As such, recognizing when you are causing customers to get frustrated can be very useful, and knowing when you are also doing the same can help both sides. For this reason, Centris actively tries to avoid this kind of escalation.

Where Poor Service Leads to Emotional Outbursts

In telematics, fleet managers are often very concerned with efficiency. They want to get from one task to another without delays, especially if they feel avoidable. As such, long hold times can cause significant frustration as they delay operational tasks, exacerbated when someone is repeatedly transferred and needs to explain themselves again.

Similarly, automated impersonal responses can make customers feel that their issue is not being dealt with and that they have no recourse to continue taking action.

If this happens during a crisis or otherwise prevents someone from fulfilling their obligations, it can often lead to an understandable outburst. Here at Centris, we want to empower customers, not give them a reason to have a bad experience in this way.

The Cost of Poor Customer Service on Business Reputation

Many customers end up handling bad service experiences by sharing them with others. Someone who has spent the day dealing with frustration due to a contact center not treating them with dignity will likely use word-of-mouth to get the message out, whether online or in person.

In today’s digital world, hundreds of people may see a single review. The ability to search and filter these by review score on many sites makes it even easier to see criticisms. When this happens, people feel empowered to do the same, often leading to significant reputation damage, which can be especially harmful in B2B settings such as fleet management.

For this reason, improving service interactions can deliver a long-term ROI by boosting customer satisfaction when they engage with your contact center.

How Centris Defuses Tension and Builds Brand Loyalty

In collaboration with external partners, we have supplied well-trained representatives with the skills and experience needed to proactively resolve issues as they occur.

Businesses trust Centris to equip their contact centers with the tools to reduce wait times, empower their customers, and ensure they meet clients’ needs as soon as possible. Through our focused efforts, we have already seen increased customer satisfaction and willingness to resolve even some of the most challenging situations.

At the same time, we also have many of the soft skills needed to make people feel heard, including training in:

• Active listening
• Personalized assistance
• Empathy-based approaches to challenges
• Managing stress alongside customers during a call
• Turning customers into loyal advocates
• Predicting customers needs

Through customer feedback, Centris also aims to iterate our service based on their capabilities and customers’ needs. They do this with:

• Ongoing specialist skill improvement
• The technology necessary to manage queries efficiently
• A drive toward personalization and tailored customer experiences
• Strong cross-departmental communication
• A proactive attitude to current and future customer complaints

With all these skills together, we can build a rapport with customers and commit to offering them a better experience in the future.

Navigating Challenges with Expert Support

Taking proactive steps to address poor customer service can lead to more loyal customers who will help you grow a positive reputation. For this reason, Centris works with its partners to provide solutions for your fleet issues every time.

So, contact us today to know more about how we can help your customer service efforts and what working with us means for your future. We can help you enhance your customer service, ensuring your fleet is satisfied with your communication long into the future.