The goal and vision of CRM is to provide a satisfying experience through all the distribution channels and technological entities desired by the customer when they choose, how they choose, where they choose. Fulfilling all these requirements will be determined by the customer, which will be generated by an excellent customer service experience. Customers do not want delay, errors, incorrect answers, or to be transferred from one agent to another. Again, we want our information through the means that we desire and we want it yesterday!!! The "seamless customer experience" respresents an opportunity for organizations to provide a value that is unprecedented by their competition.
I personally believe that there is a pheneonmal untapped market for providing this type of experience in the digital media or cable service provider industry. There has been a handful of times where I have waited fifteen plus minutes to speak to an individual who only can transfer me to the next representative to only transfer me to another division, which is incorrect as well. In the automotive industry, they call this passing the buck. Why do they get away with this type of customer service? Because I have the ability to choose from a variety of companies, either Comcast, Dishnetwork, or DirecTV....THATS WHY!!!
Some of the ways that they could reach out to provide a seamless customer experience are email, chat, embedded modules, push delivery, VoIP, and co-browsing. I will admit that I can't fault comcast for making an effort to be accessible via their retail stores, albeit few and far from it. What I can fault them for, is the process of operation at these stores. Accessbility-yes, providing a seamless customer experience-absolutely not. I can compare waiting in line at one of their stores to pulling a ticket at Bylerly's in the midst of Thanksgiving or Christmas=absolutely brutal!!! Holding virtually an oligopoly of the market has enabled the providers to treat us as such, because where else are we going to go? Well, entrepenuers out there, think about it......create value, then create the service....please, please, I am willing to pay for it TODAY!!!
Porter, Internet Marketing-Integrating Online and Offline Strategies, Chapter 8, pp. 212-218
I recently had an interesting customer service experience when trying to sign up for cable/internet. After checking out package options online, I decided to go with Charter for cable and internet. I found a great bundle package at Charter.com, but I wanted to talk to a local representative so I went to the office in Duluth. After waiting in line for fifteen minutes, I was informed by a very unhelpful employee that some of the options advertised online are not available from the store. What? So I wasted my time on a trip to the Charter store thinking that maybe I could get a better deal from a local person. The next day, I had a live online chat with a very helpful individual at Charter.com, ordered my services, received two confirmation phone calls, and had service installed the next day. I got better customer service online than I did with a real person. Charter’s online customer service was great, but they really need to take a look at their in-store service - at least in one of their Duluth offices.
ReplyDeleteOne problem is this: our accounting systems do not measure "lost opportunities." They do not measure ROI too well for a lot of the soft touch stuff that leads to great experiences and loyal customers. If managers were truly compensated on customer satisfaction and not such things as # employees/sales or some other metric, you would find a different take on things.
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