Cloud CRM Software Forum

What's So Scary About Customer Service Technology?

About 15 years ago, I wrote about telecommunications. This was so long ago that, in addition to my other beats, I was told I'd be "the Internet guy" – after all, why would a magazine about telecommunications need more than one reporter covering the Internet?

Besides the tiny topic of the Internet, I had some other beats as well. One of them was customer service software technology. Over the course of many briefings, I was treated to previews of some really nifty technology. Some of it would enable phone company service systems to collect data about a problem once, and then, if the problem needed to be handed off to a different department, pass that record off so that the customer didn't have to repeat it all again! What an idea!

The problem was that the phone companies just weren't buying this technology. It wasn't that expensive, but in the thinking of the bean counters, it was still cheaper to have agents take the same story from the customer twice or three times. Never did the customer experience enter into the decision making process, primarily because the emphasis back then was on customer acquisition, not on retention.

So fast forward to today. We all know how far customer service software has come, and how readily available it is as SaaS. The recession has caused smart businesses to shift their emphasis from acquisition to retention, since there aren't as many customers to acquire. Service is a cornerstone of retention, which suggests that it's critical to have service squared away if you want customers to stick around.

So have things changed in the past 15 years? If you've had to call a cable company or your telephone provider, you probably know the answer.

What's the problem? Why aren't advances in technology, decreases in prices and improvements in software delivery steamrolling objections and resulting in service experiences that work better for both the customer and the company?

Darned good question. I wish there was one coherent answer. I suspect it's a combination of things: service still being viewed as a cost center, a reluctance to accept that acquisition is no longer the most important activity within the business, a fear of the IT implications of implementing new technologies, and other issues. Here's the problem: all those issues have jack squat to do with the customer. They're all about internal issues that frighten management. But fear should not paralyze management – to paraphrase Denis Pombriant, if something scares you, it also indicates an opportunity. It's time to stop dithering and seize the opportunity.