Fazle Rabby

Why your Customer Service Design is failing (Hint: Look at the top) We’ve all seen it happen. A company hires a consultant, buys fancy new CRM software, and rolls out a 50-page manual on Excellent Service. Six months later? Nothing has changed. The staff is still stressed, and the customers are still frustrated. Why? Because service design doesn't stick if leadership doesn't model it. You can design the perfect car, but if the leader refuses to put fuel in the tank, it’s just a heavy piece of metal sitting in the driveway. Here is how leadership must value service to make the design actually work: 1. Metrics vs. Meaning If a leader only asks about Average Handle Time (how fast you hung up), the team will never prioritize Customer Satisfaction (how well you helped). The Fix: Leaders must measure what they claim to value. If you want a service-first design, start your meetings by asking for a story about a happy customer, not just a spreadsheet of...

Training is not just an "add-on" to customer care; it is the driving force behind the design of the entire customer experience (CX). Without proper training, even the best-designed service processes can fail because the people executing them may lack the confidence or knowledge needed to deliver effectively.    1. Closing the "Design-Execution Gap." Service design often looks impressive on paper but can fall short in practice. Training ensures that the intended design aligns with the actual customer experience.   - Consistency: Training guarantees that whether a customer contacts you via phone, chat, or email, the tone and resolution process remains consistent. - Skill Alignment: If your design incorporates "empathetic conflict resolution," but your staff isn't trained in active listening, that design element becomes ineffective.    2. Empowering "Service Recovery" Design In customer care, issues are inevitable. Training equips staff to handl...

Hire the Heart, Train the Hand Headline: Stop hiring for years of experience. Start hiring for capacity for kindness. I can teach a new hire how to use our latest AI-integrated CRM in a few days. I can show them how to navigate our refund policy in an afternoon. But I have never—not once—successfully taught someone how to be a decent human being under pressure. The CX Hiring Trap: We look at resumes for keywords like proficient in SaaS or Expert in Omnichannel. But in 2025, AI is going to handle the proficient parts of the job. What’s left? The Human Connection. How to Spot the CX Mind: Look for Service DNA: Don't just look at corporate roles. Someone who worked as a nurse, a teacher, or a server in a busy restaurant often has more Service DNA than someone who has sat behind a desk for ten years. They understand the Invisible Labor of making people feel safe. The Waitstaff Test: I’ve heard of leaders who take candidates to lunch just to se...

Permission to WOW If you give your team a script, you’ve already told them you don't trust them. We spend thousands of dollars training our customer care teams, only to hand them a 50-page manual of approved phrases. Then we wonder why our loyalty scores are stagnant. The truth? Scripts kill empathy. The Ceiling of a Script: A script ensures that your service is okay. It prevents disasters, but it also prevents magic. No one ever told their friends about the time an agent read Paragraph 4, Sub-section B perfectly. The Floor of Empowerment: When you give your team Permission to WOW, you change the game. Look at the Ritz-Carlton. Their Ladies and Gentlemen have a $2,000 discretionary budget to solve guest problems on the spot. No manager approval. No red tape. Look at Zappos. They don't track Average Handle Time. They track Personal Emotional Connections. They know that a 10-hour call that creates a fan for life is cheaper than a 2-minute call that ends in a cance...

When asking Which channel do your customers complain about the most?, the answer depends on whether you are looking at where they initiate the complaint or where they feel the most frustrated. Based on 2025 consumer data, here is the breakdown of the Complaint Landscape: 1. The Volume King: The Phone While digital channels are rising, the phone remains the #1 channel for complaints, especially for complex or high-emotion issues (like billing disputes or service outages). The Data: Roughly 70–80% of customers still pick up the phone when a problem becomes serious. The "Most Complained About" Factor: The phone is also the channel customers complain about the most. 61% of customers cite "being placed on hold" as their top service grievance. 2. The Visibility King: Social Media (X/Twitter & Facebook) Social media has become the Public Square" for complaints. The Data:...

The best service is the one you never have to ask for.  We’ve spent decades obsessed with "Response Times." We track how fast we answer the phone, how quickly we reply to emails, and how high our "Happiness" scores are. But in 2025, if your customer has to reach out to you to solve a problem, you’ve already lost. Welcome to the era of Invisible Care. What is Invisible Care?     It’s the shift from being a "Firefighter" to being a "Fire Preventer." It’s the service that happens in the background, driven by AI, IoT, and deep data empathy. It’s the "Curb Cut" of the digital age—making things so seamless that the assistance becomes part of the atmosphere. The Pillars of Invisible Care in 2025: Predictive Problem Solving  Don't wait for the "Website Down" tweet. Use AI to monitor anomalies. If a user’s subscription is about to fail due to an expired card, don't wait for the lockout. Send a proactive " one-click...

Measuring Happiness Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) tells you if a customer liked a moment. Measuring Friction (CES) tells you if they will stay. For a long time, companies focused on making customers happy or delighted. But research—most famously from the Harvard Business Review—found that customers don't actually need to be wowed to stay loyal. They just want things to work without a headache. Here is why Customer Effort Score (CES) is being called the metric of the decade.   1. Happiness is Fickle; Effort is Actionable Happiness is a mood that can change based on the weather or how a customer’s day is going. If you ask a customer, How satisfied are you? (CSAT), They might say 7/10 just because they’re in a rush. Friction is different. When you ask, How easy was it to solve your problem today? (CES), you are asking about the work they had to do. High Effort: I had to call three times and talk to four ...

Is your customer care truly accessible to everyone, or are you unintentionally locking the door on millions of potential customers?  In today’s market, inclusive design isn’t just a "nice-to-have" feature or an HR buzzword—it is a business imperative. When we design for the "average" user, we ignore the 1.3 billion people worldwide living with some form of disability. Why Accessibility is Non-Negotiable Inclusive design means creating products and services that can be used by everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities. If your customer support relies solely on a phone line, you’ve excluded the deaf community. If your website isn't screen-reader friendly, you've lost customers with visual impairments. The Reality: Making your service accessible doesn't just help people with disabilities; it creates a better experience for everyone .  Inclusive Design in Action The "Curb Cut" Effect: Ever noticed the ramps on sidewalk corners...

In the early days of  AI , businesses were just happy if a chatbot could answer a question. Today, customers are smarter and more sensitive to how they are treated by technology. Chatbot Design Ethics is the "moral compass" that ensures an AI helps a customer rather than tricking, frustrating, or exposing them. Here is why it matters and how it impacts customer care. The Core Pillars of Chatbot Ethics If you are designing a chatbot for customer care, these are the four ethical rules that keep the experience positive: 1. Transparency (The "I am a Robot" Rule) The Ethics: A chatbot should never pretend to be a human. Tricking a customer into thinking they are chatting with "Sarah from Support" when it's actually an AI is a major breach of trust. Customer Care Impact: When customers find out they’ve been lied to, they feel manipulated. Being honest (I'm the Digital Assistant) sets the right expectations. 2. The...