The Best Service is No Service

Author:Price, Bill, Jaffe, David & Jaffe, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2010-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

What Will Be Achieved as a Result of the Contact (What Comes Out of the Tap?)

The last foundation element that companies must consider is what services and outcomes customers are expecting from the mechanisms and channels that are available. Failing to understand this can make contact channels totally ineffective and, worse yet, can create snowballs (repeat contacts for the same issue, as we showed in Chapter 2). For example, a major computer manufacturer established a pilot retail outlet to compete with Apple’s highly successful retail stores. Unlike Apple, this company didn’t provide any form of post-sales service or technical support in the stores, nor could customers buy new computers or hardware or get machines fixed or upgraded. The pilot failed to generate the sales figures the company wanted, and after a few months it closed the store. Imagine if Apple had done the same thing. How would customers have reacted if they couldn’t return their precious iPod or get a new laptop battery just before heading out on vacation? Each contact channel needs to deal with the expectations of customers.

The Teleclaims example further illustrates this step. Customers called expecting to obtain the status of their claim and to be able to influence the timing in some way. Imagine their dissatisfaction when this didn’t occur, a clear example of a contact channel set up to fail. Once again this comes down to management of expectations; if customers are aware that each contact channel performs functions in certain ways, they won’t be disappointed by those outcomes.

Laying the foundations includes promoting and making clear the role that each channel can perform and defining how it works. For example, pretending that a certain phone number will allow customers to have person-to-person service when it only enables automated transactions will frustrate customers. However, if a number is clearly advertised as “our automated payment” line, the expectations are set appropriately. This isn’t just about telling customers what they will be able to achieve; it’s also about understanding what they want to achieve.

One further negative example illustrates the danger in not understanding how customers expect to interact with you. A new budget airline launched recently in the United States and proudly advertised that customers would be able to book only through the airline’s Web site. Despite all the evidence that personal interactions can be highly effective in closing high-value sales, this company is determined to box its customers into one channel. We’ll wait with interest to see if that works, but we suspect it won’t.

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