The emerging top topic for customer service professionals is how technology enables genuine, two-way conversations between companies and customers. Customer Service is the New Marketing (streaming live today) is an important catalyst for this industry-wide conversation.
Companies with rich communication channels have more positive, successful brands than those without rich channels. I met some of the speakers last night, and heard story after story that illustrated this point. Here are a few of the best:
- At Virgin Mobile, company representatives are empowered individuals. When a South African sales representative accidentally keyed in the wrong phone order, that same representative tracked down the angry customer the next day…amd hand-delivered the correct device. Overnight, the phone call from an angry crusader was transformed into a praise-filled letter by a loyal customer evangelist. “We’re a big organization, so we can pull strings to make things right…those little touches are important because of the difference it makes inside of our organization.”
- Rackspace recently discovered that full disclosure can result in higher revenues. As technicians rushed to assure uptime in the aftermath of Florida’s Hurricane Ivan, they were hit with an unexpected second wave of disaster: a truck driver plowed into the datacenter building, knocking out service for hours. Customer service reps proactively contacted the affected users to apprise them of the situation. Although a few customers (out of several thousands) cancelled service, this were dramatically outweighed by the flood of new customers – customers who signed up specifically because they saw how Rackspace addresses problems.
- GeekSquad actively converts disgruntled customers into loyal brand advocates. “Customers will forgive anything if they know you’re trying.” Daily RSS feed monitoring recently exposed that a podcaster had made a short, negative mention of GeekSquad in her daily podcast. A company representative called her up, apologized for the problem, and promptly fixed it. Responding to a complaint letter would have been completely hidden from public view, but responding to a blog post was something that the world could see: the podcaster’s entire next post was about GeekSquad and her positive experience with the brand.
Customer service is a key, but ignored, marketing channel. From my own personal experience, I can certainly confirm that every contact with me-the-customer is a branding opportunity. What stories do you have?
