We’ve all experienced it: you call your credit card company or some other such company, and are prompted to enter your account number into the keypad. Then, when a real person comes on, they ask you for your account number again.
This is a poor customer experience. Why ask the first time if they are simply going to ask again? I can understand that, for security reasons, they might want the live person to get the number from you. But what possible benefit can it be to them to have you key it into the pad initially if they are only going to ask for it again later?
That’s a rhetorical question. I’m sure the companies have lots of good reasons. But, there are good reasons behind every poor customer experience. We need to get beyond allowing “good reasons” to complicate the customer’s life. And if we say “what’s the big deal with requiring the customer to do another 30 second action,” we aren’t truly thinking of the customer first.