Message in a Bottle

Corporations spend millions of dollars to set up better customer service, sometimes forgetting one simple parameter: approachability. Many customer complaints and questions are still handled like in medieval times: read with a delay by someone in organisation who gives a mediocre answer, your return question is handled by another person… and so on. Sounds familiar?

Here are three ways to improve approachability:

1. Set up an online chat to solve customers' problems and answer questions in real time. Positive examples: Apple MobileMe and ConstantContact.
2. Offer telephone support only if you really intend to serve the customer. Negative example: Easyjet where you are led into an endless loop of questions and answers without any chance to talk to a real person.
3. Talk and email with one voice to the customer. It is annoying to get contradicting and redundant answers each time from a different person. Negative example: Harvard Business Review subscription office.

So where is your organisation on the scale from “message in a bottle” to easy “real-time support”?

Ready to improve? We are here to help you set up appropriate business processes for great customer service.

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Comments

[Velan]

Volkmar, The topics you are posting are quite interesting.

I totally agree with you on this. However I have a small comment - What if this is part of the corporate strategy to reduce the customer calls. But then this is possible only in the situations of the dying products or the products in the phased-out mode.

For example, I have setup the customer support process for our product. I could think of situations from the company's strategy involves reduction of the unneccessary calls from the customer.

Thanks,
Velan