Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Way I Think Customer Service Should Be Approached

Since I've came to the USA I've encountered two extremes of customer service. From one side there are companies that provide a great customer service exprience as: Apple,Dell,Marriot Hotels,Starbucks and many more but from the other side companies that caused me frustation like: MCdonald's,Calvin Klein,Priceline.com,Microsoft and many resturants that I don't attend anymore.
I've concluded that the companies that have superb customer service are the ones that use the role of customer service as active rather than passive. What that I mean is that the companies understand the needs\frustation of a customer with out the need that he will explain it explicitly.
For example, A week ago I've ordered Chipotle through the Iphone App, I went to the resturant 15 minutes later and the order wasn't ready. They appologized and did it in 2-3 minutes. Than, I've discovered they prepared be a Burrito instead of a Bowl. I've returned she Appolagized again, asked the kitchen to fix my order and quickly gave me complimantry chips and salsa. In addition she offered to serve me the food when it is ready which I kindly refused.
The thing is that chips and salsa costs almost nothing to Chipotle but they understand that it is better to compensate me with a cost of 1$ than letting me leave the resturant and maybe not getting back.
For all the call centers, I would suggest that companies should consider to open outgoing calls call centers.
Those customer service should call back to customers in different segments and that there records indicates they are dissapointed from the agent\supervisors when they called.
Let's take the cellular companies for an example. T-mobile can create a field of customer value meaning how much is the customer is valuable to the company (based on how much his bill is and how many lines he has).
After this segmantation T-Mobile can create special discounts\plans if this customer is in his way to leave the company but much before he calls to disconnect the line. If he already bought AT&T cell phone this plan is worthless.
To conclude,the all approach that customer service should answer questions and not being creative and active is wrong in my opinion.
As the economy moved to be a Service Economy instead of Manufacturing customer service should be the main goal of the companies.

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