I’ve said for a long time now, that there are only two things that really send me ballistic. One is my computer when it doesn’t do what I want, but goes merrily along doing what it wants; the other is having to call an 800 support line.

Sure, there are a few I use that are terrific, but most send me screaming into the night—and that’s before I manage to reach a live person.

It’s slow, but, at last, call center culture is moving from equating performance with burning through as many calls as possible to focusing on actually solving the caller’s problem on the first call.

Wow! How’s that for a direct-to-the-bottom-line approach. Maybe all those studies showing that it costs far more to acquire customers than it does to retain them is finally sinking in. Just proves once more that VSI is the best motivator—for companies as well as individuals.

The downside (you knew there was a downside) is that callers (you and me) are supposed to jump through all the automated hoops, since this supposedly gets you to a specialist. That might work once I know that the merchant I’m calling is one of the converted, but, unfortunately, that can’t be assumed since solvers are still a minority.

So I’ll still look to bypass the system—at least until I have an experience that proves that it’s worth working within it.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 10:46 am and is filed under Business info, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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