Michael MaozIt is pretty amazing to find the number of customer service organizations that are deep into discussions on Social Media and Social 2.0 or 5.0 or whatever we are up to today, yet have broken Customer Service processes. Like where you pay your bill online but the Service Agent on the phone has no access to the details. Or you buy an expensive item in a store but the customer service agent has no knowledge of what you bought and under which terms and conditions. Or the completely broken processes that almost every major car manufacturer in the world have in capturing your service record and service warranties online so that you, and the dealer, and the global customer support center can all have a shared view. Now that would be priceless.
Priceless would be when your health insurer had anything pro-active to say to you. Or your physician. Or your own employer. Or your city government; cable provider; utility; tax authority; airline. There is no end to the list. We are so far back in Customer Satisfaction that it borders on CRM Narcolepsy, even after 14 years of trying, and the cross-industry customer satisfaction data backs that up.
Before all of the Industry Experts trot out the same tired list of ‘world class companies’ from their Pollyanna CRM Tales, could we remind ourselves of the paucity of that tired list?
Of course we have to keep pushing the envelope of what we can do to embrace the voice of the customer in peer-to-peer communities. That helps marketing, sales, service, logistics and product development. Yet there is a risk of Social Process Myopia narrowing our field of vision unless we step back and plug into what customers want from us – in their own words. If they say that you’ve perfected the stuff that really matters – then you are good. You can stand up there in the service pantheon with Lands’End and Amazon and my local bike shop, the devil’s gear (http://bit.ly/qDFOQB – because they not only charge you a fair price, but then assemble whatever you bought and then explain it all to you for as long as you want – try that with self service online).
Some of the fervor of the Social Media crowd sounds like it’s led by CRM Savonarola. And it sounds like old school these days to talk about antiquated interfaces and poor process design and inadequate knowledge management systems. Yet for the majority of organizations, there is still a lot of work to be done to engineer great customer experiences that involves the basics.
Be brave and be transparent: show the data that demonstrates the health of your key customer processes, from the perspective of the customer, and then plug in “Social” or whatever else into the equations needed to solve for those issues.
Category: Analytics for Social CRM CRM Innovation and Customer Experience Leadership Social CRM Social Networking Strategic Planning Tags:
7 responses so far ↓
1 KK October 10, 2011 at 1:54 am
What? Social is not an incredible magic wand that turns agents into caring humans and customer service is a delight? Dammit! ; )
We actually hear from customers that they need to hold their own executives back from thinking that social is the silver bullet. Let’s face it, it can’t fix what’s fundamentally broken. But the best examples we see are those clients that are integrating their offline/online programs in a way that allows: a) the community to rapidly troubleshoot thousands of ‘how to’ questions from peer sources they trust b) the call center to answer fewer but deeper, more complicated issues that leads to customer success and allows the agents to feel more fulfilled solving tough problems and c) imagine this, a database of knowledge that is shared and captures it all.
2 Scott October 10, 2011 at 3:42 am
Social does bring new things to the table – the scope and power of peer-to-peer interactions is pretty breath-taking. But an overlooked benefit is the old points social can make with a much louder and empowered voice. Whether shining a light on broken processes (in your examples above), or bad business decisions (Netflix anyone?), social makes it harder to sweep those problems under the rug. But at the end of the day we still need to listen and deliver a quality customer experience. Social doesn’t change that, it accentuates it.
3 Links for October 10, 2011 « Andrzej's Links October 10, 2011 at 11:27 am
[...] Fix bad Customer Service processes and you'll need a lot less Social Anything. [...]
4 Chuck Van Courtr October 11, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Hi Michael:
In addition to not addressing the root cause of most customer care issues amplified on the web, opening up social networks into suspect core customer care infrastructure will surely only magnify inadequacies and expedite brand damage.
It will be nice when this technology matures more and the messaging for how, when and where social should be used in customer care is more balanced with insights from operational heads who are accountable for payback and can share practical insights learned from actual experiences instead of being driven pretty solely by the folks who are undeniably biased by the prospects of personal gain.
This shinny new technology in the room is indeed powerful, but far from a silver bullet or even the number 1 priority for many organizations.
Michael,: Where do you see social in customer care being in its life cycle?
Best, Chuck
5 Social and Collaborative Business: My Favorite Reads. (weekly) | Pretzel Logic - Social and Collaborative Business October 15, 2011 at 8:41 pm
[...] Fix bad Customer Service processes and you’ll need a lot less Social Anything. [...]
6 Rahul Sheth October 17, 2011 at 6:56 am
I believe the major problem with the telecom operators or banking or insurance CRM is they are “departmental” in nature. CRM is looked upon as a checklist item. Organisations implementing CRM do not have a organisation wide “One Vision” for the CRM solution which results in poor collaboration between various teams/departments and a lack of 360 degree view of the customer.
Though billion dollar enterprises have been created around CRM solutions and a lot written about the topic, the failure rate has been consistently more than 50%. There is a need to create a High Impact CRM delivery model which can handle change management across the organisation to provide a satisfactory customer experience.
Cheers
CRMnext
7 Andrew Moyer October 17, 2011 at 12:32 pm
From a top level view it does seem amazing how companies, such as the scenario with vehicle warranties, can’t make a clear view of warranty options for all to view. I mean of course that would be amazing.
The problem as I see it isn’t really that they don’t THINK to do this. I see it more that they can’t afford to do this. Reason being that on one specturm, CRM solutions are only as good as the creator creating that solution for the masses. This then creates the problem that it solves some issues for all but not the company specific for each.
So what is the alternative option? Build it yourself of course! But why doesn’t this happen? The answer is simple. It costs too much. But the question begs, “how much is not creating the solution costing us?” The company is still making money right? It comes down to the great people in a company that see these solutions but face a MASSIVE uphill battle to “prove” this needs to be done, getting the resources, hiring/finding the project managers to manage, and then finally making it happen.
Even once the company takes that step to make the custom solution they need to look at their data to figure out the best solution and how it ties into their current processes. Then comes the downward spiral of self evaluation and realizing there is much more to fix before you take the plunge.
Hence the endless loop that causes most companies to have poor customer service/customer experience and the overflow of frustrated customers in the end that share in social mediums.