Category Archives: Customer Experience

Customers Care About the Destination Not the Journey

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Customers Care About the Destination Not the Journey

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

On a recent flight, the captain of the airplane announced over the PA system what time we would arrive at our destination. That would have been enough to make most people happy. However, he continued his announcement with a three-minute-plus speech. We learned that we would take off to the west, make a U-turn a few minutes later to head east, how high we would go, the various cities we would be flying over, that we would take a right turn as we approached the runway to land, and more. I looked around and noticed many people were annoyed or had stopped paying attention to the long-winded announcement.

The point is most customers don’t care as much about the details of the journey as they care about the destination.

Here’s another example, which has nothing to do with a journey but does have to do with an overload of details that can hurt a sale or erode the customer experience. Some people love a fancy, expensive sports car, while others just want reliable transportation. Even though these customers essentially want the same thing – a car to get them from one place to another – they are very different customers.

Shep Hyken Lobster Cartoon

A few years ago, my wife and I were looking for a new car. We narrowed it down to the make and model – even the color – we thought we wanted. We walked into the dealership and were approached by a salesperson who was very friendly and engaging. Then, we told him what we were looking for. So, he took us over to the exact car we wanted. He was very excited. He started to share details about the size of the engine, how many cylinders, how quickly the car could accelerate from zero to 60, the RPMs, and other details that mattered nothing to us.

Had he asked why we were interested in this model car, he would have realized we had no real interest in such details. Our version of the destination was that we wanted a nice-looking car (and it was) that was comfortable, safe, and easy to drive. Maybe we wanted to know a few other details about the car, but nothing to the extent he was sharing. Had he paid attention, he would have noticed he had us when he said, “I have the exact car you’re looking for.”

My point is that most customers don’t care about the details behind the experience or product they are buying. It’s up to us to recognize this and respond accordingly. All they want to know is what awaits them at their metaphorical destination.


Image Credit: Shep Hyken, Pixabay

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Rethinking Customer Journeys

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Rethinking Customer Journeys

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Customer journeys are a mainstay of modern marketing programs. Unfortunately, for most companies, they are pointed in the wrong direction!

Most customer journey diagrams I see map the customer’s journey through the vendor’s marketing and sales process. That’s not a customer journey. That is a vendor journey. Customers could not care less about it.

What customers do care about is any journey that leads to value realization in their enterprise. That means true customer journey mapping must work backward from the customer’s value goals and objectives, not forward from the vendor’s sales goals and objectives.

But to do that, the customer-facing team in the vendor organization has to have good intelligence about what value realization the customer is seeking. That means that sales teams must diagnose before they prescribe. They must interrogate before they present. They must listen before they demo.

That is not what the typical sales enablement program teaches. Instead, it instructs salespeople on how to give the standard presentation, how to highlight the product’s competitive advantages, how to counter the competition’s claims—anything and everything except the only thing that really matters—how do you get good customer intelligence from whatever level of management you are able to converse with?

The SaaS business model with its emphasis on subscription and consumption creates a natural occasion for reforming these practices. Net Revenue Retention is the name of the game. Adoption, extension, and expansion of product usage are core to the customer’s Health Score. This only happens when value is truly being realized.

All this is casting the post-sales customer-facing functions of Customer Success and Customer Support in a new light. These relationships are signaling outposts for current customer status. Vendors still need to connect with the top management, for they are the ones who set the value realization goals and provide the budgets to fund the vendor’s offerings, but for day-to-day reality checks on whether the value is actually getting realized, nothing beats feet on the ground.

So, note to vendors. You can still use your vendor-centric customer journey maps to manage your marketing and sales productivity. Just realize these maps are about you, not the customer. You cannot simply assign the customer a mindset that serves your interests. You have to genuinely engage with them to get to actionable truth.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pexels

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Great Customer Experience Work Begins Here

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Great Customer Experience Work Begins Here

by Braden Kelley

What Customer Experience Really Is

Customer experience (CX) is an essential part of any organization’s success. CX is much more than the level of customer service a company provides. CX is the totality of a customer’s interactions with an organization over the course of their shared relationship. Customers develop a perception of an organization across all their interactions. This perception is an accumulation of the physical, emotional, social, and psychological experiences they have when interacting with the product or service itself, to the way they’re greeted on the phone, to the quality of the interfaces to the organization, its employees, and its information.

Successful organizations consciously create a positive and memorable experience for the customer, from the moment they first engage with the organization. Organizations must design their overall experience with the customer in mind, and tailor it as much as possible to the individual customer’s needs and preferences. Creating meaningful interactions with customers and delivering a great customer experience drives loyalty, trust, and word-of-mouth not just now, but for years to come.

Only the Customer Can Improve the Customer Experience – Usually

This may almost sound like I’m blaming the customer for their bad experience, but the customer does play a central role in making their own experience better. But sometimes they are actively prevented from doing so.

When it comes to customer experience improvement initiatives, many organizations behave in a quite parental way. They think they know best, and instead of investing the time, energy and money to gather the voice of the customer, they use of the voice of the business instead.

The voice of the business is what I call it when an organization speaks on behalf of the customer, assuming and asserting that they know what the customer is thinking and knows what they want (or need). This can be a shortcut used to produce a customer journey map on a deadline, but can quickly turn into a detour if you don’t then validate it with real life customers to make sure that your visualization of the customer journey is accurate and representative.

Only the customers know what their experience is. So go talk to them!

Continue reading the rest of this article on HCLTech’s blog

Image credits: Pexels

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Ten Reasons You Must Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences

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Ten Reasons You Must Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Ten years ago, I wrote an article about why delivering an amazing customer service experience is important. While many of those concepts are still valid today, it’s time to modify the list and give a few of the original reasons a facelift to bring them into current times.

First, a reminder that an amazing customer experience isn’t about being over the top. It’s simply consistently meeting or (ever so slightly) exceeding expectations. It’s the consistent and predictable experience that makes customers trust you and come back.

So, here are today’s ten (10) reasons why you should deliver an amazing customer service experience:

  1. Creating customer service builds trust, credibility and confidence. Our customer experience research found that 83% of people trust a company or brand more if it delivers good customer service. The benefit of building trust is potential customer loyalty.

  2. Your happy customers become the best members of your marketing department. The right customer experience gets customers to talk about you, refer you and evangelize your brand.

  3. Delivering an amazing customer experience makes price less relevant. Fifty-eight percent of customers we surveyed said excellent customer service is more important than price.

  4. A great customer experience goes hand-in-hand with a great employee experience. It’s no surprise that the best customer-focused companies are also some of the best places to work. Just compare a list of companies that provide the highest levels of customer satisfaction with the list of the best places to work on www.GlassDoor.com. It’s no coincidence that many of the same companies appear at the top of both lists.

  5. Customers who typically receive excellent customer service from you will be more willing to provide honest feedback when there is a problem or complaint because they trust that you will fix the problem. And when you do, they come back.

    6. Shep Hyken Amazing Cartoon

  6. Seventy-eight percent of the customers we surveyed said they would go out of their way to do business with a company that delivers a better customer service experience.

  7. You can’t afford not to deliver a strong customer service experience. Seventy-four percent of customers would switch to a business that provides better customer service.

  8. A good customer service experience leads to higher customer retention and customer lifetime value (CLV).

  9. An amazing customer service experience begets positive comments and reviews.

  10. Finally, do it because it’s the right thing to do!

If you want customers to do business with you, you must treat them in a way that makes them want to do so. Don’t expect them to be loyal to you until you show loyalty to them. That comes in the form of delivering an amazing customer experience.

This article originally appeared on Hyken.com

Image Credit: Pixabay, Shep Hyken

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Top 5 CX Strategies, Objectives, and Challenges

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Top 5 CX Strategies, Objectives, and Challenges

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Reuters Events puts on a series of global leadership conferences that focus on key topics & challenges within particular industries, such as pharma, energy, automotive, and more. Their mission is to “offer help in the sectors where it’s needed most, using specialist industry knowledge to promote development.” Their upcoming Conference in San Diego, Customer Service & Experience 2023, caters to service & experience professionals from across industry lines.

I had a chance to interview Josh Wheeler, strategic events director, customer service & experience, to discuss their recent research titled State of Experience and Service Report 2023. In this report are some fascinating findings that we can all learn from. They surveyed 321 global business leaders from various industries. The first big question:

Why should you invest in CX and customer service?

  • 93% of the executives said it’s a key brand differentiator.
  • 86% said it’s the bedrock of profitability.
  • 79% said it’s the foundation of customer loyalty.

More and more, the concept of CX (which includes customer service) is becoming as important – if not more so – as any other important strategic initiative. In a world where most of us have direct competitors who might sell exactly what we sell, the only thing to differentiate us from the competition is the CX we deliver.

With that in mind, here are five of the top objectives, challenges, and strategies from the project’s findings, along with my commentary:

1. The Biggest CX Investment Challenges

You have an idea to improve CX, but you must get buy in from the C-Suite and other stakeholders. It turns out the number one challenge is demonstrating ROI. While we all want happy customers, our leaders are often concerned with the cost to do so. I’ve always preached that CX shouldn’t cost. It should pay. When asking for new technology, more people, training, etc., you must show the return. It must go from a “nice to have” to a “must have” based on the benefits to customers, employees, and the bottom line.

2. The Top Customer-Centric Objectives

The number one objective of the 321 executives surveyed was analyzing and using customer feedback. Often a company will ask for feedback, and they get it. Then what do they do with it? Many times, not enough. Feedback is the best opportunity for improvement. Get it and use it.

3. Two More Customer-Centric Objectives

The second and third most important objectives, improving the quality of the customer support experience, and creating frictionless cross channel experience. Whether you’re making a purchase, gathering information, or reaching out for customer support, quality and ease – as in low or no friction – are important. This is what customers want and expect. Anything less may have them looking elsewhere to do business with a company that is easier and more customer-focused.

4. KPIs Make the Case for Investing in CX

The C-Suite and leadership live and die by met KPIs. When it comes to CX, two tied as most important; CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score and NPS (Net Promotor Score). Both of these numbers give you similar information. They let you know if your customers are happy (or not). A high score in either of these measurements is like a grade in school. Our leadership is grading us on our CX. Right behind these two are two more that are tied; ROI and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Both of these numbers are tied to profitability. We all want to put more money to our bottom line. One way to do so is to increase the CLV. Once we have a customer that loves us, nurture that relationship to keep them loyal. Loyal customers not only keep coming back, they typically spend more than other customers.

5. Focus on the Employee Experience and Not Just the Customer Experience

The executives were asked, “How important is a good employee experience when looking to achieve a world class customer experience?” A staggering 87% said it was important, with more than half of those saying it was extremely important. Brilliant! If you want to have a good customer experience, start with a good employee experience. There’s an old saying that it costs less to keep existing customers than to keep finding new ones. It’s the same with good employees. The cost of hiring and training to replace good people can be a big expense on a company. Give employees a reason to stay, which starts with the culture of the organization. They will work harder, engage better with customers and colleagues, and they will stay.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Pexels

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Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars of 2022

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Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars

by Braden Kelley

Recently Forbes and HundredX partnered together to produce a list for three hundred (300) customer experience all-stars utilizing an extensive online survey over the course of 2022, gathering 3.7+ million ratings of more than 2,220 unique brands.

121,000 respondents chose and rated the brands and products they view most positively across more than a dozen categories scoring the company’s products, services and treatment of customers.

The list at the link above can be searched for a specific company or sorted by brand category. If you want to see all 300, go there, but if you just want to see the Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars, here they are:

  1. Buc-ee’s
  2. Chick-fil-A
  3. Toyota
  4. Costco
  5. In-N-Out Burger
  6. See’s Candies
  7. Trader Joe’s
  8. Chewy
  9. Lexus
  10. Publix Super Markets
  11. Honda
  12. Wawa
  13. Mario
  14. Dutch Bros. Coffee
  15. Zelda
  16. QuikTrip
  17. Marriott
  18. Apple iPad
  19. Wegmans Food Markets
  20. Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants

Here is an example of the first page of a brand survey from their methodology:

CX All Stars Survey Page 1

From here it goes into what’s good and not so good about the product, what’s good and not so good about the platform & company, and then digs into why the survey participant said certain items were good or not so good, before finishing with an open comments box and a rating of future usage and 10-point scale on likelihood of recommendation. People can rate up to seventy-five brands.

Takeaways

Customer Experience is incredibly important, and recently in my article Brewing a Better Customer Experience I laid out both the Seven Characteristics of a Great Customer Experience and also the Seven Steps to a Better Customer Experience. Both lists are available there as downloadable PDF flip books.

And while I disagree on certain elements of the methodology used to craft this list, particularly the comingling of brands and products together in the same list, it nonetheless helps to shine a light on the importance of focusing on delivering a great customer experience – and that’s a good thing.

People often underestimate the importance of customer experience in the success of any business. Luckily research has been done on the impact of customer experience on sales, and here are three of my favorites:

  • “86% of users are inclined to pay more for a great customer experience.” (source: Super Office)
  • “32% of customers “break up” with a favorite brand after one poor customer experience.” (source: Iperceptions)
  • “64% of buyers consider customer experience more important than price.” (source: Iperceptions)

Finally, very soon I will be publishing a series of new Customer Experience articles on the HCLTech Blog that will go into some of the next practices for customer experience research, personas, journey mapping, and experience improvement. I will introduce and link to them here, so stay tuned!

Image credit: Unsplash, HundredX

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Do your customers trust you?

Are you sure?

According to PwC’s 2022 Consumer Intelligence Series Survey on Trust, 87% of executives think customers highly trust their companies, but only about 30% of customers do. That’s a 57% gap!

The PwC survey also found 71% of consumers say they’re unlikely to buy if a company loses their trust, and 71% of employees say they’re likely to leave if they lose trust. The lack of trust can result in huge problems.

Deloitte reports that of more than 260 C-suite executives surveyed, 61% claimed their organizations would work to improve trust with customers and employees. However, just 19% have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort, and less than 14% have a way to track trust. Ashley Reichheld, principal and trust leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, says, “Building trust is among the most powerful ways brands can earn loyalty, drive differentiation and create competitive advantage.”

According to David Horsager, global authority on trust, “A lack of trust is your biggest expense in business.” His research has found that when a leader is untrusted, both employee and customer satisfaction decreases. Conversely, if a brand is trusted, revenue and employee retention increase.

The goal is to narrow the trust gap. Ideally, you want to eliminate the gap altogether. Here are ten ways to make that happen:

  1. Be Transparent – Being open and honest about your policies, delivery times, processes and more builds trust and confidence with your customers. You want them to know you and how you operate.

  2. Do What You Say You Will Do – Deliver on whatever you promise. There are many ways to lose a customer’s trust, but the fastest may be to break a promise. In short, a broken promise is a lie.

  3. Provide Excellent Customer Service – Our customer experience research found that 84% of consumers trust a company or brand more if it provides an excellent customer service experience.

  4. Protect Your Customer’s Privacy – Data protection is a hot topic. With all the data breaches, customers need to know you make a great effort to protect any information they share with you.

  5. Don’t Abuse Your Customer’s Data – This goes right along with protecting your customer’s privacy. If they are willing to give you information about themselves, even if it is just payment information and an email address, don’t abuse it by spamming the customer or selling the information to others.

  6. Be Reliable – A customer expects that what they buy from a company does what it is supposed to do. Products must be reliable and dependable. In addition, they also expect the company to stand behind what it sells with the right level of customer service.

  7. Fast Response – Customers have different tolerances for how long they will wait on hold, wait for a return phone call, an email response, etc. When it comes to customer service, fast means meeting a customer’s expectations.

  8. Be Accessible – Start with being easy to reach. Easy-to-find contact information on a website is important. Hours of operation, at least for customer service, must also meet your customer’s needs and expectations.

  9. Act on Customer Feedback – It’s one thing to gather feedback. It’s another to act on it. And once you act on the feedback, let the customers know they were heard. Always thank customers for their feedback, and follow up if it is appropriate to do so.

Create a Chief Trust Officer Role (or Something Similar) – This goes back to the finding from Deloitte at the beginning of this article. Just 19% of companies have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort of creating trust with customers.

Now that we understand more about the importance of trust, we might say those companies with a dedicated “trust officer” are a step ahead, taking advantage of a somewhat overlooked aspect of customer service. Seems like a great opportunity for any company to step up and focus on building trust—and the business that is sure to follow.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Most customer-focused businesses work very hard to streamline their encounters and interactions with potential clients, curating the experience to the smallest detail so every step of the process can be managed and controlled. It all starts with a customer journey map that optimizes the process. When the process is consistent and predictable, you start to build trust with your customers. And, there’s a way to take that trust to another level, and that’s with transparency.

Darryl “The Hammer” Isaacs, a Kentucky-based attorney, has built a profitable career by being surprisingly straightforward — another word for transparent — with his clients. He has the process down, which means he knows the law and how to litigate. But just as important as winning a lawsuit is how his clients are treated.

Since it opened in 1993, his firm, Isaacs & Isaacs Personal Injury Lawyers, has helped thousands of people recover over $2 billion from insurers. He is a celebrity in the three states where he operates (Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio), with plenty of TV ads and billboards lining the highways. But Isaacs will tell you that his secret goes beyond exposure from a big ad budget. And it isn’t about knowing the law and winning. For him, it’s just as important to build a reputation by being transparent. And he takes the concept to an even higher level by being radically transparent.

I had a chance to learn from Isaacs’ success and his thought process, which he says is based on three concepts: being humble and embracing adversity, providing easy access and trusting the public with your pain.

1. Embrace Humble Beginnings and Adversity

Isaacs’ journey to becoming a lawyer wasn’t easy. It began at age six when he watched his father’s legal swearing-in ceremony. That inspired him to want to practice law, but inspiration wasn’t enough. He failed the bar exam the first two times he took it. No one would blame Isaacs for keeping that information from the public. After all, in the competitive legal field, lawyers like to let clients know about their prestigious law schools, industry awards and big wins. Isaacs recognized the importance of that, but also chose to embrace his “humble beginnings” as a possible advantage. He believed people could relate to his struggle. This transparency makes him real and approachable to his clients. He also has an incredible work ethic. Isaacs says, “I’m not smarter than other lawyers, I just work harder.” His clients may not know about the legal world’s awards and top schools, but they understand and appreciate hard work.

2. Provide Unexpected Access

Have you ever tried to reach the CEO or owner of a successful company? Typically, the bigger and more prosperous the company, the more challenging it is to get through to the business owner or high-level execs. Isaacs is not only successful, but his advertisements and reputation have given him celebrity status in his market. His firm has more than 55 employees, many of whom could act as a “first line” of defense for deflecting calls, emails, letters, etc. But Isaacs embraces the concept of approachability. He happily shares his direct line and cell number with his clients. Text him, and he responds. Call him, and he returns the call. Isaac believes, “If you provide unexpected direct access, clients feel valued and appreciated.”

3. Trust the Public with Your Pain

Similar to the way Isaacs embraces his humble beginnings, he embraces the transparency of results. In an age of social media, it’s nearly impossible to hide any negative news affecting a high-profile business. Issacs says, “The best option is to get comfortable and let the public in.” In other words, embrace the negative and view it as an opportunity to be authentic and transparent. And it goes beyond social media reviews and comments. Isaacs took this concept to a personal level in 2015 when he was hit by a speeding car while riding his bicycle. His neck was broken in two places, and he sustained a traumatic brain injury. The face of a successful company was now in the hospital in a near-death situation. That could have been the beginning of the end for the firm. He might not ever be back. And what if people found out about this? Well, rather than try to keep the news out of the press, Isaacs did a phone interview from the hospital. First, he wanted to let the world know he wasn’t dead and would be back. Second, he was now experiencing a similar condition to many of his clients. Isaacs knew transparency—and even vulnerability—at this level would make him more approachable. The result was an even higher level of trust.

Isaacs uses the word radical, meaning extreme or intense, to demonstrate just how important it is for him and his firm to be transparent. But are his three concepts really that radical or extreme? Maybe, because customers aren’t used to this level of transparency, but isn’t this what customers want? Isaacs’ three concepts could easily form a foundation of transparency that would help any company or brand, big or small, build trust, create confidence and connect emotionally with customers.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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How to Turn Customers into Superfans

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How to Turn Customers into Superfans

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What do Apple, Zappos, and Chick-fil-A have in common? They are considered “rockstar” brands. Their loyal customers—and they have many—keep coming back and evangelizing these brands, singing their praises to the world. The customers are also willing to defend their favorite brand should someone say something negative about it.

There is a word to describe these types of customers. They are fans, and more specifically, they are superfans. Brittany Hodak may be the foremost expert on the concept of creating superfans in business. In her recently published book, Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers Into Lifelong Advocates, she defines a superfan as “a customer or stakeholder who is so delighted by their experience with a brand, product or service that they become an enthusiastic advocate.”

Hodak’s mantra is:

If your customers aren’t telling their friends about you, you’re in trouble.

So, how do you get your customers to come back, defend your reputation, and spread compliments about you? Follow Hodak’s SUPER model. The word SUPER is an acronym. To whet your appetite for this important literary contribution to the world of customer experience, I’ll share what each letter of the acronym means, followed by my commentary. Some of this is my own interpretation of Hodak’s model, but you will get the idea. So, here is Brittany Hodak’s SUPER model:

  • S – Start With Your Story: Sharing your “story” is powerful. Just make sure it’s the story that will get your customer excited about doing business with you. How should it start? Ask yourself, “Why does a customer want to do business with us (instead of our competition)?” Responses that are truly different will be important to the story. Hodak says, “Your story is your superpower.”

  • U – Understand Your Customer’s Story: Why do customers need you? The answer is their story, and when their story intersects with yours, you have the opportunity to do business, grow the relationship and create a superfan.

  • P – Personalize: The concept of personalizing the experience is a hot topic. Using data about the customer (in the right way) will create a connection. Abuse the data, and the customer will disassociate from you. Hodak uses Chewy, the online pet food, and supply retailer. The company not only know its customers’ buying habits but also often knows their pets’ names—and they use that information to create a better relationship and emotional connection with the customers. This is an excellent example of personalization.

  • E – Exceed Expectations: People often think exceeding expectations is difficult. The reason is because they confuse exceeding expectations with going above and beyond. There are opportunities to do that in special situations, but most of the time, you just need to be a little better than expected. Even the slightest bit better. When you’re at a restaurant, and you are told the wait will be ten minutes, but your name is called in eight minutes, that’s an example of exceeding expectations by being slightly better than expected. The key is to do this consistently. You want your customers to use the word always followed by something positive, such as, “They are always helpful,” to describe their experience with you.

  • R – Repeat: I love the idea of repeat. Create the system with an outcome that drives a positive customer experience every time. The key word here is system. A system can be scaled and is repeatable. It is consistent, and customers love consistency. If the initial experience was good, the next time they come back, they want more of the same. When it happens again and again, the customer “owns” the experience. They can count on it happening. Their confidence about the experience is so high they not only come back, but they also tell others. Creating superfans is an everyday, never-ending effort. Do what works again and again.

Okay, I admit it. I’m a Brittany Hodak superfan. I fall under the category of evangelizing her brand, and recommending her to clients, and now I’m writing about her book. I’m a perfect example of one of the ways Hodak describes a superfan, which is a great way to wrap up this article:

Superfans are customers who create more customers!

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Frontier Airlines Ends Human-to-Human Customer Service

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Frontier Airlines Ends Human-to-Human Customer Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

In a bold move to cut costs, Frontier Airlines announced that it would no longer offer human-to-human customer support. As a customer service expert, I was surprised at this move. I have waited to see the fallout, if any, and thought the company might backpedal and reinstate traditional phone support. After almost two months, it hasn’t returned to conventional customer support. The dust has settled a bit, and people (passengers and employees) are adjusting to the decision.

The decision to go digital is different from the decision Northwest Airlines (which eventually merged with Delta) made in 1999 to introduce online check-in to its passengers. The idea behind that technology, and eventually the technology driving online reservations, was to give the customer a better and more convenient experience while at the same time increasing efficiency. The big difference in that decision versus Frontier’s was that there has always been (and still is) an option to connect to a live agent. If passengers didn’t want to use the self-service tools the airline provided, they could still talk to someone who could help them.

That does not appear to be the case with Frontier. There is no other option. The airline is relying on digital support. If you check the website for ways to contact them outside of their self-service options on the site or mobile app, you can use chat, email or file a formal written complaint. Chat is in the moment, and can deliver a good experience—even if it’s AI doing the chatting (and not a human). Email or a written complaint could take too long to resolve an immediate problem, such as rebooking a flight for any last-minute reason.

For some background, Frontier Airlines is a low-cost carrier based in Denver. It has plenty of competition, and when you combine that with rising expenses in almost every area of business and a tough economy, Frontier, just like any other company in almost any industry, is looking to cut costs. In a recent Forbes article, I shared the prediction that some companies will make the mistake of cutting expenses in the wrong places. Those “wrong places” are anywhere the customer will notice. Cutting off phone support to a live human, just one of Frontier’s cost-cutting strategies, is one of those places the customer may notice first.

If a customer wants to change or cancel a flight, make a lost-luggage claim and more, if they have the information they need on hand and the system is intuitive and easy to navigate, the experience could be better than waiting on hold for a live agent. Our customer service research found that 71% of customers are willing to use self-service options. That said, the phone is still the No. 1 channel customers prefer to use when they have a problem, question or complaint.

Frontier’s decision to stop human-to-human customer support has generated controversy and criticism from customers/passengers and employees. The company’s management defends its decision, stating that they need to cut costs to remain competitive. They claim you can eventually reach a human, but their passengers will first have to exhaust the digital options. While self-service automated customer support may help the airline cut costs and increase efficiency, it obviously frustrates customers and negatively impacts employees.

The big concern is that 100% digital or self-service support is still too new. We are still a long way from technology completely replacing the human-to-human interactions we’re used to in the customer service and support worlds. Efficiency is important, but so is the relationship you maintain with your customers and employees. It takes a balance. The best companies figure this out.

Consider this: Video did not kill the radio star. ATMs were predicted to eliminate the need for bank tellers. And for the foreseeable future, technology will not kill live, human-to-human interactions. Frontier customers looking to save money will be forced to adapt to its new way of customer service. Knowing this upfront will help. But also consider this, something I’ve been preaching for several years: The greatest technology in the world hasn’t replaced the ultimate relationship-building tool between a customer and a business, and that is the human touch.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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