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October 07, 2004
Everything is marketing
Customer service agents can be among a company's best salaried marketers.
Solving a customer's problem, no matter how trivial, is authentic marketing. A solved problem is an evangelism opportunity; a call center may be one of the few company depots available to inspire pods of customer advocacy, especially if your product doesn't.
In the bigger picture, it seems wrong to consider customer service as an expense center that gets shunted off to the lower echelons of operations; a call center's primary purpose should be to create a positive (and, perhaps, trackable) referral. Referrals lead to revenue. Soon, everyone's experience with call centers might be vastly different.
The problem changing the big picture, of course, is institutional inertia. Customers talking to call centers are like pebbles in the ocean. Many marketers would rather spend -- or are told to spend -- millions of dollars luring in new customers while the future of existing, profitable customers is on the line, literally, inside call centers.
Combine that with the growing influence of blogs and the whirlpool effects they may cause in circles of interest and suddenly a three-minute rant can lead to domino effects, whether it's an affirmation of someone's suspicion or raising the ire of partisan supporters. Which brings me to my iPod odyssey.
Macsurfer.com linked to my blog entry about my frustrating efforts dealing with Apple's customer service reps who were trying to find my lost iPod. Within a few hours, my post had nearly 4,000 views.
Paul, an eagle-eyed Apple employee, stumbled upon the post, emailed me and said he would forward it to people inside the company. A few days later, Arin from Apple called to say he would personally solve my case. He promised continuous updates until my problem was solved. No longer would I have to explain the entire history again for the ninth time to a new agent; like Mr. Wolf in "Pulp Fiction," Arin firmly took charge.
He also provided his direct number and email address to use anytime. That was unnecessary. Arin solved my case with a new iPod in just a few days' time.
A few commentors on my original post said my experience had to be an anomaly. Poor customer service just wasn't part of the Apple they loved and defended. They were right. The congregation is smarter than the preacher. Arin discovered that shipping companies rarely return iPods as undeliverable. Inexplicably, DHL had returned my iPod to Apple after one delivery attempt. No note, no call. So my iPod was lost amidst a sea of packages in a remote California warehouse.
While my evangelism for Apple's customer service is renewed (I was a customer beginning back in 1986), I now look forward to buying an iMac with this hope attached to it: That all of Apple's front-line customer service agents tackle cases with the bloodhound-urgency of Arin.
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» Bad Apple no more from AntSaint
A month ago I posted about Ben McConnell's maddening Apple customer service experience in the wake of his iPod going AWOL during shipping. Here's an update: Church of the Customer: Everything is marketing While my evangelism for Apple's customer service [Read More]
