“What is my life if I am no longer useful to others?” von Goethe
Customer service is your best marketing strategy but for most industrial marketers it’s nothing more than a cost center. Remember when that company p***ed you off? You went and told the world about it didn’t you?
A generation ago customer service was not so important because 99% of our choices were compromizes; we chose the least risky option, the lowest common denominator and the least offensive because this was a world there was 1 official music chart, no Google and everything took 28 days for delivery.
Today there is no compromize. Youth interests are no longer bound by geographical parameters. If they want to find a set of values or beliefs that are a mirror of their own, they only have to Google them or find them on MySpace.
Problem is that the industrial complex – the agency, planner, brand relationship is still heavily geared towards awareness, market share and net adds. That means the unmeasured – eg when the campaign annoys customers, when the service is terrible, when the product doesn’t work – goes unnoticed.
For many the idea of serving the customer is merely an extra cost in the equation, so if we’re not here to serve the customer – then what?
What’s next in customer service?
* Industrial or Social – What type of youth marketer are you? (Mobileyouth)
* AOL account cancelation crisis (Buzz Marketing)
* Wireless Carriers Fail (Again) On Customer Experience (Customer Experience Matters)
* Will 2009 Uncover Price Fixing On the Backs of Texting Teens? (Shaping Youth)
* Do companies actually like their customers? David Lazarus suspects not… (Customer Experience Crossroads)
* GM’s Customer Experience Woes (Customer Experience Matters)
* Customer Experience Rankings 2008 (Logic+Emotion)
* Bad News Travels Fast Via Twitter (AdPlup)
* Loyal gas and electricity customers overcharged by £181m (Telegraph Finance)
* Customer managed experience: Facebook lets you vote on ads (Customer Experience Crossroads)
* Greyhound Canada: How To Piss Off All Your Customers Without Actually Making Them Any Safer (Matador Network)
* Survey says – CMOs dont understand loyalty (The Customer Institute)
* Service Counts More than Price (The Customer Institute)
* Customer Relations: How Does Your Brand Rate? (Branding Strategy Insider)
* Maintaining the Customer Experience – Mckinsey (Trendbird)
* Target Clerk Bans Mobile Price Checking (Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog)
* Customer Service as a Truly Positive Global Experience (Tech PR Gems)
* The Real Impact of Customer Complaints (The Customer Institute)
* Learning customer-centricity from ING Direct (Customer World)
* WOMMA: Approaching WOMM Through Customer Service (Digital Influence Mapping Project)
* Industry Customer Churn Rate increases 15 percent (Geoconnexion)
* Don’t Take Good Customers For Granted (The Big Kahuna)
* In Customer Service, You Are Always On Stage (Customers Rock)
* Learn the Lesson of BMW’s Customer Journey (Guest Bloggers)
* youtube your brand experience (Influx Insights Weblog)
* Ask Employees How to Improve the Experience – They Know What to Do! (Technorati)
* Amazon Rocks (JupiterResearch Analyst Weblog)
* Communication lessons from JetBlue (NevilleHobson.com)
* One way to get loyalty behaviors: make it really difficult to cancel (Customer Experience Crossroads)
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mobileyouth – Youth and Customer Service 05 Feb 09: “What is my life if I am no longer useful to ot.. http://tinyurl.com/blg2×2
Sure, I went and told the world about it … but not a single one of them cared. And why? Is it because the popular expectation for product support is that only a fool would expect customer service?
Things may be different where you are, but here in Canada, no one I know would be foolhardy enough to call Microsoft about problems with the O/S, or call any of the 1-800 numbers printed on just about every consumer good, because they know it will be a waste of their time. Sure, there are exceptions, Dell for example not only remembers my name when I call but remembers what sort of computer I have (tho sometimes not the revision) and I’ve told the world about that too, yet that hasn’t influenced anyone’s buying habits either.