I think this man is the only one who “gets” it. Seth Godin hits the nail on the head again with his newest post, and I wish more CEOs and VPs would read and understand it. He asks a simple question “Who answers the phone?”
At my last company, our customer support came out of Pakistan. Yep, one of those annoying companies you call and get someone that doesn’t speak English very well. Don’t get me wrong, I loved all our people in Pakistan, but the customer service was horrible.
Every once in a while, we’d have 2-3 days where there were riots, bombings (happy to live in America!), or phone lines were down. Those were the days when the product people had to answer the phone. While it was detrimental to our own workload, the customers were so happy to hear it was us! We got things taken care of the right way the first time and things got fixed.
But every company still spends less on customer service than they do on other forms of marketing. I mean there are lots of people to employ, but the cost of adding a training with the product person once a month would cost very minimal money and bring back so much in return.
It’s like walking into a retail store and lucking out by getting someone that knows the store products, the person that can really help you. Remember it only takes one bad experience to create a lifetime of bad word of mouth.
