Businesses, including banks and credit unions, are increasingly both the cause and the target of customer anger. When the customer experience fails to meet customer expectations, customers are less willing to forgive and more likely to express their dissatisfaction. By understanding customer expectations and delivering experiences that come closer to meeting them, banks and credit unions can take control over customer anger that results from frustrated expectations.
Takeaways:
- Customers are angrier than ever because of subpar service experiences, and they are increasingly likely to express their dissatisfaction.
- Customer satisfaction occurs when service delivery meets expectations; frustration results when the experience does NOT live up to the expectation.
- Managing customer volatility involves understanding their expectations and building frontline execution that closes the gap between the expectation and the experience.
“I’ve never seen such bad customer service in my life,” declared one financial consumer frustrated during the recent merger of a large bank. His reaction to the situation – and to the halfhearted efforts of the bank to resolve it – went from a sidewalk protest at his local branch to filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This customer’s readiness to take action in response to substandard service reflects a trend most frontline retail workers could tell you about: a rise in customer anger.
(I’m not going to tell you which bank it was – but you’re welcome to guess.)
It seems like people these days are carrying around, just below the surface, a pool of simmering anger, just waiting for a provocation to trigger an eruption. From irate airline passengers to “hangry” restaurant patrons given the wrong order, we see more examples every day of customer service gone bad. What is causing customers to so quickly give in to their tempers?
Unmet Expectations are the Cause of Customer Frustration
For consumers, satisfaction (the opposite of frustration) results when the service or product delivered meets or exceeds their expectations. So when there is a gap between the expectation and the reality of service delivery, you can either improve performance or lower expectations. But in many cases today, expectations have reached unprecedented levels, and empowered consumers won’t willingly scale them back!
Some suggest that pandemic-related disruptions revealed that consumers’ expectations were not realistic. Before the pandemic, people had gotten used to the idea that you could get whatever you wanted, the moment you wanted it. Supply chains were not an issue; store shelves were always fully stocked. COVID changed that reality, at the same time as it reinforced and accelerated services like Amazon and Door Dash that make personalized, to-your-door catering the standard in consumer fulfillment.
If we have not adjusted our expectations, the gap between them and what is actually being delivered is a catalyst for intolerance, rudeness, or outright violence. No wonder workers are abandoning the front lines! It’s hard to keep the maxim that “the customer is always right” in mind when you’re being bombarded from all sides. Customer expectations may not be within your control anymore, thanks to the Amazons of the world. So your success depends on ensuring that your frontline performance is delivering on your customers’ expectations – because if you don’t meet them, there’s no shortage of competitors promising they will!
Knowing the difference between the expectation and the actual execution is where you lose or gain control.
With so many factors working to escalate the frustration – what is acting to defuse it?
Gaining CX Control: Understand Customer Expectations, then Execute to Meet Them
The best way to manage a potentially volatile customer encounter is to prevent it from becoming one in the first place. An approach to service quality based on a time-tested methodology like SERVQUAL can identify what the customer expects and what they actually experience with you during every human (or digital-to-human) moment you deliver.
Think with me right now, for just a moment. How many human experiences are occurring or have occurred in the time it took you to read this post? Then, how many of those experiences resulted in a customer being well-pleased with the bank or credit union’s execution of the experience delivered? You don’t know, do you? But you need to know because knowing the difference between the expectation and the actual execution is where you lose or gain control.
Gaining control starts with knowing your customers and ends with using that knowledge to inform your front line coaching. When your customer-facing employees learn, practice, and master best-in-class service behaviors, they gain the skills to deliver service that goes a long way to fulfilling your customers’ expectations. That puts you back in control, working with your customers rather than bracing for the next eruption.
Customer-focused credit unions and banks rely on us to Diagnose, Prioritize, Fix, Accelerate, and Differentiate. Contact us for a meaningful conversation about how we can get YOU from where you are to where you want to be!
