The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Houston, We Have Dialtone!
Friday - January 05, 2007 03:43 PM in
I am only a little surprised at how functional we were able to be sans phones for 3 1/2 days this last week. Or said differently, thank goodness for e-mail, even with the 227 new spams in my box.
In truth, and this is hard to admit for a person who's career has been largely dependent on voice telephony, I find e-mail to be a better communications tool than the telephone in circumstances where instant communication isn't paramount. As a salesperson, the percent of people I am able to reach by phone is maybe 1 in 4, and when I do get a "hit", in essence I am asking the person to stop doing/thinking whatever was occupying them and concentrate on my message. That's a lot to ask. In an e-mail, I can make my points, and the receiver can read and digest my message with the "when" being in their control. (The downside with e-mail however is that unlike the phone, the message deliverer loses control over whether the message gets read at all. So in sales at least, a combo of phone connection followed by a directed e-mail seems the best approach.)
Statistics on the subject differ only slightly and suggest that as e-mail became common many customer care operations embraced the technology as a "cheaper than the telephone". Some predicted that Internet communication would quickly come to replace the phone.
Didn't happen. What we saw was that the Net added a new communication channel, not replaced one. Phone volumes stayed at the same levels and total contacts increased by roughly 15% when e-mail was added.
And more recent hints suggest that the percent of e-mail contacts into customer care versus the telephone are actually decreasing. Thinking it through, that makes sense. Americans in particular are impatient. We want our answers now. Booting up the computer, trying to find/remember the correct web address, sorting through flashing and distracting graphics to find how to communicate (there ought to be some standards), typing the query, and then waiting (sometimes for days) for our answer; takes a LOT more time and effort than making a phone call.
Yesterday, I completed buying two nearly identical "things", both made by the same company. One was available over the net through a reseller, one wasn't. I made an e-mail inquiry of the re-seller on a feature of the thing and waited two days to get my positive answer. I placed the order electronically. I got an e-mail thanking me for my order; another with payment details, another advising of the shipping charges (causing me to make a call anyway to correct them), and another thanking me for my payment. Today, the supplier called back to ask if I wanted model A or model B of the thing, even though the answer was on several of the e-mails already sent. I had to call back and confirm it was "B". Notice this was a total of seven e-mails and three phone calls over several days. For the other virtually identical item, I called the company directly, ordered the part with a credit card and was promised shipping the same afternoon. A single 5 minute call versus 10 contacts over three days, clearer communication, and thing 2 cost $3.50 less and will arrive sooner. No way did the substitution of e-mail ordering instead of a real person save that reseller any overhead. All it did was cost me more time and money.
E-mail has its uses, but making the phone passe? No way.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Statistics on the subject differ only slightly and suggest that as e-mail became common many customer care operations embraced the technology as a "cheaper than the telephone". Some predicted that Internet communication would quickly come to replace the phone.
Didn't happen. What we saw was that the Net added a new communication channel, not replaced one. Phone volumes stayed at the same levels and total contacts increased by roughly 15% when e-mail was added.
And more recent hints suggest that the percent of e-mail contacts into customer care versus the telephone are actually decreasing. Thinking it through, that makes sense. Americans in particular are impatient. We want our answers now. Booting up the computer, trying to find/remember the correct web address, sorting through flashing and distracting graphics to find how to communicate (there ought to be some standards), typing the query, and then waiting (sometimes for days) for our answer; takes a LOT more time and effort than making a phone call.
Yesterday, I completed buying two nearly identical "things", both made by the same company. One was available over the net through a reseller, one wasn't. I made an e-mail inquiry of the re-seller on a feature of the thing and waited two days to get my positive answer. I placed the order electronically. I got an e-mail thanking me for my order; another with payment details, another advising of the shipping charges (causing me to make a call anyway to correct them), and another thanking me for my payment. Today, the supplier called back to ask if I wanted model A or model B of the thing, even though the answer was on several of the e-mails already sent. I had to call back and confirm it was "B". Notice this was a total of seven e-mails and three phone calls over several days. For the other virtually identical item, I called the company directly, ordered the part with a credit card and was promised shipping the same afternoon. A single 5 minute call versus 10 contacts over three days, clearer communication, and thing 2 cost $3.50 less and will arrive sooner. No way did the substitution of e-mail ordering instead of a real person save that reseller any overhead. All it did was cost me more time and money.
E-mail has its uses, but making the phone passe? No way.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 03:43 PM by | | | |