Trying to be more visible… and more usable

Geoff Galat, Tealeaf

A good overview of how online experience and usability – particularly around failed online processes – can be and should be addressed. Of particular interest to me is the use of error messaging as a relationship opportunity and how they can be built to reduce call centre costs. Geoff noted that when online failures are reported to call centres they still often don’t get satisfaction because the people answering the call don’t know what the customer went through. Yes, indeedy.

The major takeaways from this presentation was:

• The confirmation that our efforts in error messaging are worthwhile,
• The necessarily and increasingly close alignment between the website and the call centre particularly around allowing online clients to complete or discuss online behaviour with call centre agents (the relationship between website and call centre is now *assumed*)
• The need to find a way to make the visitor experience visible to us and our call centre, and the need to track and follow-up on online failures.

In regards to the last point we might need better banking system reporting for error messaging: how many things went wrong, and what did we show users (and what did they do) when it went wrong? The business case seems straightforward and an easy pitch: we can flat-out reduce call centre volume.