Customer Service

Written by Seth Godin

A b2b insurance agency spent two million dollars ripping out voice mail from their agency. Every call gets answered by a human every time. It paid for itself in four months. That’s a strategic investment, not a cost-cutting shortcut.

Comcast and the other cable companies led the way in treating customer service as nothing but an expense, one that they work overtime to decrease. And so now, it’s not unusual to spend an hour or two trying to get help from Adobe or Apple. Fedex now takes more than two minutes (up from 2 seconds) to connect a valuable customer to a human operator. Apple, the most valuable company in the world, has shifted its customer support promise to one of denial, delay and disrespect. Was that an intentional strategic act?

The thing about strategies is that you and your team can work to maximize them. If answering on two rings is good, then answering on one ring is better. If 10 helpful salespeople are profitable, then 20 very helpful salespeople are better.

The truth about strategy in a competitive environment: If you are doing what everyone else is doing, if you are inside the band of common, then it’s not an approach that will move you forward. The only way to use customer service as a growth strategy is to be outside the accepted norms.