notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

When Call Center Doesn’t Suck

IT’S A CUSTOMER SERVICE BLOGATHON! Joel Spolsky produced “Seven steps to remarkable customer service”, a very CRM 2.0-ish view on these things: Make customers into fans, he says. Damn right! And, he says, don’t only solve the problem but make sure it never happens again.

Seth Godin is on to something, too, and writes that instead of trying to solve the customer’s problem right here, right now, companies could adopt an asynchronous method of fixing problems that would give them the time to do it right.

In my view, call centers are a nuisance and no matter how well they perform, they have a tough job turning irritated customer into fans. You call a helpline when you’ve got a problem, and if and when it’s resolved, you are relieved; does that make you happy? Spolsky says it might - when the company goes out of its way to serve your very special needs.

So, I am doubtful about the asynchronous approach as it doesn’t answer my first very special need: the reason I called, the problem I have. I do want to have at least a partial success when I finish the call. Being told to wait until tomorrow doesn’t even come close.

What I would propose is to use the “small steps” approach whenever possible. Is there something we can give the customer right now? It might not even have anything to do with the problem at hand; we want to compensate for the emotional trauma the customer is going through (it might not be that bad but what do you know? - you don’t, so better take it seriously). If the invoice was wrong, give him a month of free service starting this minute, then send the correct one. The important thing to remember is that we’ve made the first step to meeting the customer’s needs at the very moment we’ve detected them, and we take the second (big) step whenever we’re ready.

What the first “small step” should be is unique to each business and each type of support call. I don’t mean to imply companies should hand out free products or services to anybody with a problem; the “gift” can be immaterial, it could be a piece of useful advice, whatever. There’s better be something, though.

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February 21, 2007 | Filed Under CRM 

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