In response to the Comcast horror story that’s been making the rounds lately, these stories are spread through a number of other companies. Bottom line, all of these customer service call centers are designed to pressure the sales rep into grinding more revenue out of the customer, with zero emphasis on helping solve their problem.
This is a big chunk of inertia to overcome, but I believe terrible customer service is an opportunity for disruption. Once people have an option that doesn’t suck (like this, which still doesn’t suck, even after all these years), they’ll flock to it.
I like the BBEdit reference…so true
The preponderance of customer-retention abuse of this kind is just another symptom of having allowed companies like Comcast to become too big and powerful. Good customer service becomes a boardroom joke when you no longer have to worry about someone else taking your business away.
And with our public infrastructure under the control of outfits like Comcast and Verizon, where is there room for disruption? How can an independent ISP provide an alternative?
Gruber talked about this in his last podcast w/ John Moltz this week. More importantly, they commented on Tim Cook’s repeated focus and mention of customer satisfaction in the last several quarter’s earnings calls. Not surprisingly, Apple is again out ahead of the pack – and focusing on something that will differentiate them from everyone else – and pay dividends in the long run.
I used to work for a large market research firm and we focused a lot on customer engagement (satisfaction). The pinnacle of customer satisfaction are companies like Disney and Ritz Carlton. The ultimate measure of a company that has reached that level is whether customers say “I can’t imagine a world without…” Obviously, most readers here would feel that way about Apple – but it’s good to see that they are focusing on reaching that level w/ the average consumer.
It will be interesting to see Samsung’s reaction to this recent incident where an S4 exploded under the pillow of a 13 year old girl. This has all the earmarks of a PR disaster. Research has shown again and again, it’s never the problem that drives a customer away from a company – those are expected or at least understood by most people. But the company’s REACTION to that problem makes all the difference in the world.