Pylon’s Post

Part of Pylon's spotlight series in CX leaders, I shared my insights about the future of CX including the potential use of AI in customer support space! Give it a read, share, and your comments!

An exciting and well-deserved spotlight of our very own, Emre Tekoglu! 🌟 Emre, Zywave's VP of Customer Support plays an active role in the industry and shared in his recent conversation with Pylon how Zywave is leveraging AI to optimize service. He also explained how the focus of customer support will shift in the coming year. "Taking care of both customers and employees will be the key to success in 2025." 🚀 #Zywave #InsuringGrowth #Insurtech #CustomerSupport #AI

A tale of two customer service experiences. Background: I'm moving to Spain at the end of the month (yay!). Now I'm canceling services I no longer need. State Farm: How may I help you? Me: Hi, I'll be moving overseas and need to cancel my car insurance. I'm selling the car. State Farm: Oh, that sounds like a grand adventure. What is the date you want the insurance to end? Me: End of the month. State Farm: Okay, that's all set. We'll refund any overpayment within a few days. Have a wonderful time! * Spectrum: If you'd like to install new service, please select 1. If you'd like to . . . . Me [frantically hitting numbers]: I just need to cancel my service. Spectrum [hangs up]. Me [dialing again]. Come on, come on. Spectrum: If you're a new customer, please select 1. If you're an existing customer . . . . Me [stabbing the 2]: Okay. Spectrum: If you're having a problem with billing, please select 1 . . . . Me [stabbing the 2]: Okay Spectrum [hangs up]. Me [opening chat online]: Cancel my service. Spectrum: Online chat agents cannot cancel service. Please call NUMBER. Me [dialing AGAIN]: Come ON. Spectrum: If you're a new customer . . . Me: At least I have the pattern memorized. Spectrum: Please hold. Me: Okay. Spectrum: If you'd like a call back between eighteen and twenty-two minutes from now, please press 1. If you'd like to remain on hold, please remain on the line. Me: Well, I wouldn't LIKE to remain on hold but I guess I'm going to have to. Spectrum: [hold music]. Fifteen minutes elapse. Spectrum: Hello, my name is NAME. What is your name? Me: Jennifer Lawler. I'm moving overseas and need to cancel my internet service. Spectrum: I see you've been a customer for a long time. May I ask what you use internet service for? Me: Can you please just cancel my service. Spectrum: May I tell you about some benefits-- Me: I AM MOVING OVERSEAS. SPECTRUM DOES NOT OPERATE OVERSEAS. Spectrum: One moment please. Me: Okay. Spectrum: When will you be moving? Me: End of the month. Spectrum: I'm sorry, you've called too soon. Me: What are you even--? The last time I needed to make a change I was told I had to give 30 days' notice. Spectrum: No, that's not true. Me [abandoning the argument because what's the point]: Fine, but please cancel the service. Spectrum: You'll need to call back. Me: I HAVE BEEN ON HOLD FOR THIRTY MINUTES. I AM NOT CALLING BACK. PLEASE CANCEL THE SERVICE. Spectrum: Please hold. Me [fifteen minutes later]: Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Helloooooo? Spectrum: Yes, can I tell you about an upgrade-- Me: I AM MOVING OVERSEAS! PLEASE CANCEL MY INTERNET! Spectrum: Well, I can't do it at the end of the month. I can do it on the thirtieth. Me: Oh for zeus's sake. Fine, cancel it on the thirtieth. Spectrum: Please hold. Ten minutes elapse. Me: Hello? Helloooo? Spectrum: You may experience interruptions in service because you called too soon. Me: Have you canceled my service? Great. Goodbye. Can you guess which company I'm likely to recommend?

💫In the care industry, customer support often encounters unique challenges. Here are some of the most common issues they face: 👉Emotional Conversations Support agents frequently interact with clients or their families who are emotionally charged, stressed, or anxious due to health or care needs. These conversations require patience, empathy, and an ability to navigate sensitive topics carefully. 👉Urgent Requests for Assistance Many clients need immediate assistance for health, medication, or caregiving support. Handling urgent requests in a timely manner, especially when resources are limited, is a common challenge. 👉Complex Case Management Care plans are often unique to each client, and agents may need to review or update complex case details, coordinate with medical staff, and ensure seamless communication across teams—all of which require attention to detail. 👉Handling Service Complaints Clients or family members may express dissatisfaction with care quality, response times, or specific services. Customer support must manage complaints calmly, address concerns, and communicate solutions or adjustments diplomatically. 👉Scheduling Conflicts Managing appointments, caregiver schedules, and availability for clients can be challenging. Agents need to find ways to accommodate last-minute changes and resolve scheduling conflicts efficiently. 👉Billing and Payment Issues Payment plans, insurance coverage, and billing queries are common in the care industry. Agents may need to explain complex billing processes, clarify insurance policies, or resolve disputes over charges. 👉Navigating Privacy and Compliance Concerns The care industry is subject to strict regulations regarding privacy and data protection (e.g., HIPAA in the U.S.). Agents must be trained to handle sensitive information correctly and ensure compliance in every interaction. 👉Providing Support for Limited Resources When caregivers or resources are in short supply, customer support faces the difficult task of managing expectations and finding solutions for clients despite these limitations. 👉Coordinating with Multiple Stakeholders In many cases, customer support must work with caregivers, medical professionals, and sometimes government agencies. Balancing communication and ensuring everyone is informed can be complicated, particularly if response times vary between teams. 👉Managing Long-Term Client Relationships Since many clients in the care industry receive ongoing services, customer support needs to build and maintain positive relationships over time, addressing evolving needs and fostering trust throughout the care journey. It is essential to respond to these special problems with care, even if the customer does not seem to be particularly upset over the situation. Rather than complaining, about half of all customers who experience service problems will simply take their business elsewhere. READ MORE ON THE COMMENT SECTION AND SHARE THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE AS A CS

🐘 I've been a customer service person since, well, forever. Newspaper route, retail clerk, retail clerk, retail jr. mgr., retail mgr., retail entrepreneur, general contractor (OK- that's a little more technical), disaster response, insurance adjuster, insurance auditor (OK, maybe not so much CX), claim mgr (internal CX), building consultant (internal CX) and so on. Tech innovation came along for me and the realization that tech is cool but needs to facilitate analog service. International customers became a focus but from an aspect where customers needed to be shown what service is for a respective product/service. Even interaction with social media is a CX effort- engagement, meaningful comments, support, and helpful content creation. Look at what you do- I'll suggest at its core it's purpose is customer service once the trappings of your role are lifted. Service is the core of commerce. Recognition of same is the core of success. It's hard to view every service interaction as being uniquely important since most often it's repetitive work for you. 👉 But remember- for the consumer that transaction is the sole focus of their connection with you. 🎯 See every customer interaction as the only important thing since your full attention to the customer will be reciprocated with their business with you. Your full attention will be 'seen' by the customer and appreciated. Your full knowledge of what you do will complement the customer's lack of knowledge. That is how these things work. It's a bonus interaction if you can share learnings with the customer. 🙏 I'll grant you it's hard to have that perspective because of so many distractions in the work/customer environment but once you learn it muscle memory makes it easier. Have a great day, YOU are the best thing your customers interact with.

I've been musing on "customer service" this last few days having dealt with various insurance companies and delivery firms. It made me feel that, in this world of "efficiency" and "immediacy" we have lost contact with people - both in terms of the customer and the customer service operator. Each has their own stuff going on which impacts their interaction. Targets, processes, pushing "download our app". Or anxiety, a need to resolve something, pressure. Not to mention any personal issues either could be dealing with. This is not conducive to a positive interaction, and has negative effects all round - brand, reputation, well being. The "good" customer service I've received this week (and, indeed, given from the other side of the fence), has been rooted in listening taking time empathising seeking to resolve and most importantly being honest and taking accountability Sadly the "poor" customer service has been defensive lacking clarity lacking understanding and a little grumpy! It made me wonder if customer service operators feel valued and empowered? As the first (often only) contact with a company, how they feel and how they make a customer feel is so important. How can companies better support their frontline employees to exemplify all the pithy positive epithets emblazoned across their websites? Your call IS important.

Customer Service at "its finest": Call 1 to Miles & More GmbH: Kindly requesting a miles upgrade for a flight from VIE to BKK - referring to the fact that a ticket class was chosen which allows miles upgrades. The agent is not able to find the booking, neither with the ticket number nor the booking reference. I am asked to call EVA Airways Corp. to request a special ticket reference number. Call 2 to EVA Airways Corp. to request the special ticket number. Such a thing apparently does not even exist. However the agent there informs me that there is a bug in the system preventing the transfer or info from Eva Air to Miles and More. They are aware of the situation, but cannot do anything about it. Call 3 to Miles & More GmbH to pass on the information and saying that their problem should not be my problem. The (different from agent 1) agent informs me that he can see my ticket in the system, however I have ticket class Q, while miles upgrades are only possible with ticket class Y, B or K. Call 4 to EVA Airways Corp. to ask the (of again another) agent why I have paid for a ticket with miles upgrade option, but apparently this option is not an option. Only now I receive the information that miles upgrade with this ticket class is only possible with the companies own loyalty program "Infinity MileageLands". A reason why this is not clearly indicated upon the booking path or why this is not possible using Miles & More GmbH although EVA Airways Corp. is part of Star Alliance cannot be given. I'm left with paying a premium for a service which is not available and a sour feeling of having talked to 4 service center agents who were eager to get me signing out from the call as soon as possible.

Trip Advisory: Avoid British Airways (BA) - BA Cancels flights and cheats its customers. (British Airways, Sean Doyle, Judy Goldfarb)   Have you encountered problems with getting reimbursed for a flight cancelled by British Airways? If so, please comment below and share with friends, as I am in contact with a law firm that has been successful in class action suits against British Airways.   I've never sued anybody or any corporation before... so why am I considering a lawsuit against British Airways now? Because I see no other alternative: the normal Customer Service channels at BA do not work. I've detailed my experience below, and I suspect that I'm not alone in encountering these problems.   My experience: BA canceled our return flight from Rome Italy to Portland Oregon USA in mid-October 2024 without notifying us. We found out during check-in 24 hours before our scheduled return flight. I spent the last day of our vacation scrambling to get a flight back to Portland, OR. BA Customer Support via their chat function offered no flight options and refused to help us book another flight on a different carrier. We were forced to book an expensive last minute flight on KLM, costing us over $3,000 for two tickets.   To be clear, we paid BA for the flight home. They kept the money, and refused to fly us home. BA has not issued any reimbursement to us for the flight they cancelled or expenses we have incurred, despite our good faith efforts to follow their procedures for submitting a Customer Service Case via their website. We went through all possible communication channels to get a resolution and ran into multiple barriers. BA did not allow me to talk to anybody in Customer Service (via phone); nobody answers their published Customer Service phone numbers. BA's webforms generate multiple errors, and BA's customer service people don't respond to email. Their AI chatbot is a gatekeeper that initially blocks access to a human support agent; I had to request three or four times to speak to a human before the AI chatbot would connect me to a real agent. I had 4 chat conversations. Sadly, the human agents on Chat aren't much help. They continue to tell me to fill out a webform, even after I explain that this form doesn't work. They say there is no way for them to escalate the problem, and no way for me to contact the customer support in any other way other than the website. A visit to BA rep at the PDX airport was no help either.   No resolution. I doubt my experience is unique. It is illegal and immoral for BA to retain their customer's hard earned cash when BA cancels flights.   I would prefer to settle my small claim now, with promises that BA will clean up their act and stop making it so difficult for customers to resolve claims. If that's not possible, I will pursue my claim via the legal system, and make sure to warn the public against BA's rope-a-dope scam. BA, if you are listening, I invite you to DM me, so we can resolve this directly.

🤨 What would you do in this situation? (no really, I want to know...) When you've had a bad experience with a company -- and it's still in process -- how do you handle it? Some of the more common things I've seen include: --> Social media rant --> Google (or Yelp or industry-specific) reviews --> Contact customer service --> Reach out to an individual at the company I'm at the "all of the above" point with Avis Budget Group. I'm doing my best to get their attention, but it's not working. I'm not trying to be petty or dramatic, and I'm not even trying to warn others against using them. Dominique Glanville and I are simply trying to get the issue resolved. I tried to reach out directly to Izzy Martins via email, but the email address I found online bounced back. At this point, it's been two weeks and my team has wasted way too much time on this. So now it's time to "go public" with it. Some of the low-lights of my experience: 1 - Waiting in a line for 90 minutes to be told I was in the wrong line (and that I "just should have known" about the other line) 2 - Second employee mansplaining to me that there were huge signs I missed (trust me, I was in line for 90 minutes, I looked for signs) 3 - First car I got had a flat tire 4 - Second car was a Chrysler Pacifica with known recalls, which left us stranded on a bridge with traffic going by at 60-70mph (this could be 18 points, but I'm trying to be succinct) 5 - Being offered a $10 Uber voucher to drive back an hour to the airport to get a new car 6 - A week later, sending me text messages warning of legal action because I had not returned the car (it had been towed within 2 hrs of picking it up) 7 - Spending a total of 4-5 hrs (at least) on the phone between Roadside Assistance and Customer Service, who can't decide who I should be talking to (dropped calls, being passed back and forth, starting the whole story over) 8 - Finally being told the car was returned, and that next time I'd owe a fee for not including the keys (keys were in the car when the tow truck arrived) 9 - Since I pre-paid for the vehicle, Budget's policy is that I paid a non-refundable deposit and despite the terrible experience -- and only having the car for 2 hrs -- my money is theirs to keep (it was actually a biz trip, so it's HEIGHTS STRATEGIC MARKETING money) So tell me internet... How would *you* have handled this situation? How could I have done this better? What would *you* ask Avis Budget Group for to make this right? Also, pic or it didn't happen, so I've also included the real-time footage of being stranded on the bridge. ********UPDATE: Jack Pytka has personally reached out to ensure a full refund and has added free rental days to my account.

Imagine you’re a subscriber to a service and have made the decision to cancel. You’d expect that the cancellation process take, more or less, the same amount of time and effort it took you to subscribe to the service in the first place (maybe a couple more minutes to consider any retention offers from the service provider). A couple of clicks on my account page, some tempting counter offers which I planned on declining (nothing wrong with the service – I simply have alternatives). Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Imagine my (first) surprise when I found out that one such service mandated a chat with an agent prior their “approval” of my cancellation. OK, I thought, another 2-3 minutes and I’ll be able to continue with my other tasks. Then came surprise #2. The chatbot cheerfully advised that I’m facing a 20-30 minute wait for an agent. Yes, I’ll have to keep my attention on that screen for some time until an agent is available to try and coax me into remaining a loyal, paying customer. Hmmm… This is not a rant post. I’ve always used my own interactions with any service/product provider I’ve been dealing with as a professional learning opportunity - to gain insights on how this critical juncture of customer churn/retention is (or could have been) dealt with. How my teams and I may be dealing with it in my organization. Anyone who’s been building high performance support organizations for many years can easily fall into the trap of a myopic perspective about their own operations. I can honestly say that I’ve learned quite a bit over the years also by being a customer myself. The head of such Support operations in any organization must consider a multitude of factors, options, possibilities and realities – most of which I have no insight into in that specific company. All I have to work with is my own experience (both as a professional and a customer) and the phrase I learned at the beginning of my professional career: “people may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel”. This concept has proven to be true in any professional environment my teams and I ever operated in. A customer reaches the churn/loyalty decision point, already dismayed that they have to spend even more time and chat with a person before they can cancel - and is then being put on a long, unnecessary hold for that forced interaction. Unnecessary because customer retention is where you want your best, most effective, compassionate, attentive and AVAILABLE agents to be. This is your last chance to retain this customer. Instead, you’re making them feel you don’t value their time. What are the chances that customer will be convinced to remain loyal? Was that really your best flow option? #customersupport #customerinteractions #supportoperations #technicalsupport #customerretention #customerexperience