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The hypothesis this article makes is that customers don't necessarily want a relationship with companies. I think that that's an overly simplistic view of the p

by samdk 16y ago

The hypothesis this article makes is that customers don't necessarily want a relationship with companies. I think that that's an overly simplistic view of the picture. First, all of the examples given involve routine tasks large institutions. I don't generally get good service from airlines and banks aren't great either. I'd love to have an airline or a bank that treated me like a person (and I think a lot of other people would too), but the fact is that most of them really don't. Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship". Most companies aren't interested in relationships, they're interested in their bottom line. And usually, it's quite obvious. You have to actually try if you want to build relationships with your customers. Second, the reasons many people prefer self-service kiosks are not actually all that mystical. Saving time is a huge one, but I think there's another reason that's maybe just as important: people do not like other people seeing them make mistakes. In any transaction, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. When I'm at a bank I might fumble with my wallet, drop something, forget to fill out exactly the right form in exactly the right way, forget to sign the check I'm depositing, etc. People make small mistakes all of the time and they don't like other people to know about them. If they're interacting with a machine, they can hide those. If they don't know exactly what they're doing, they can figure it out themself. People like to look like they know what they're doing. When they don't, they don't like people to see that. In my experience, people really like good customer service and being treated well. The thing is that you really can't half-ass it, and you shouldn't try to force people to interact with you when they have no reason to. It's important to recognize that direct interaction often inconveniences people, even if the reason for that inconvenience isn't completely obvious. If you want to build relationships with your customers, remember why they're there. They're not there to interact with you, they're there to get the service or product you're selling them. If interacting with you isn't helping them in some way, it doesn't matter how friendly you are: it's still a negative experience. Building relationships has to be mostly a byproduct of doing a good job, not the end goal in itself.

astine 16y ago
I agree and disagree with you here. I think the kiosk/Internet verses customer-rep/ call choice is actually a convenience issue more than it is a relationship issue. However, I really do think that the whole relationship with a huge multinational thing is overblown. What does it even mean to have a relationship with a company? When I have a relationship with a person, it means that we know each other, have an understanding of each other, possibly we're friends. Companies however are collectives. I can't possibly acquaint myself with every member of a large company nor can they be expected to all acquaint themselves with me. A company can keep a file on me, tracking what I've with them and who I've talked to, which is sort of a relationship, but not really. They can also appoint someone to be my dedicated representative, but the rep can't represent the company in all of it's aspects. I think that the nitty gritty of it is that for the most part, my transactions with corporations are ephemeral. If I end up building a relationship over them, then something is wrong. I don't want a relationship with Dell (for example) I just want to buy a computer. If I have to talk to their tech support, that means something went wrong. I'd be nice if my bank's representatives were friendly and polite with me, and if they were helpful, etc, but I don't really care if they remember my name. Already have friends, I don't need a bank to be one too.
- dagw 16y ago
  I don't want a relationship with Dell (for example) I just want to buy a computer. I don't know. Back when I had a job which required me buying lots of hardware it was really nice to have the phone number to a sales person who knew my name. Most of the time it didn't add too much over using a web page, but occasionally I'd have to make a call and say something like "look I know your web page says the delivery time for Widget is 5-7 days, but I really need one this afternoon, can you help me out?" And most of the time they'd pull some strings and work something out and a courier would show up with the Widget I needed. I'd never get that sort of service if I didn't have a relationship with the salesperson at the company.
  - matwood 16y ago
    That's the only experience I've ever had with Dell and I always thought their CS was fine ;) When you're buying 100s or 1000s of computers from them the level of service they give is much better than the person buying the single $300 laptop.
Silhouette 16y ago
> Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship". Exactly. I think the underlying issue here isn't so much automated vs. personal, it's just good service vs. bad service, or if you prefer, effective vs. ineffective communication. Telephone service is usually the worst: tedious automated menus, up-front warnings about recording this and invalidating that if you so much as breathe during the call, long (or worse, unknown) queuing times, and then you just get to speak to someone who can't deviate from their script to help you, assuming you can even understand what they say if they're based in some far-away call centre where employment is cheap and accents are strong. Neither the automated aspects nor the personal ones are much good here, though I've noticed a trend in the past couple of years for some companies to make a marketing point that they do have local call centres with real people answering the phone and very short queuing times. Personal favourite anecdote for poor telephone service: I once had to call a credit card company to notify them that someone had been acting suspiciously with my card in a restaurant in a foreign country and I thought they might be trying to double-charge me. The card company left me on hold for so long -- calling from abroad on a mobile phone -- that my phone battery was starting to die and I lost the call, though of course not the charge for it. Since they clearly don't take security seriously, I now use a different credit card. In contrast, automated on-line services often work fairly well these days: all of the banks, investment firms, etc. I work with have decent web sites, they basically work, they're reasonably easy to use, and they let me do what I want to do quickly. For some things, I would still rather use a real person, though. For example, I am quite tall, so if I'm booking seats for any sort of show in a venue I haven't been to before, I usually still prefer to call or visit the booking office and ask them about which seats have enough leg room, even if the company has an otherwise excellent web site for ticket reservations. The most striking example of preferring personal service I know is that several of the supermarkets in my area have recently installed self-service checkouts, where you scan all your own items and pay at the end. Typically there are just a couple of store staff supervising a whole set of these, instead of one staffer per checkout aisle. However, unless you're just buying one or two things, almost everyone seems to have these infernal machines and will join a queue of half a dozen people for a staffed checkout in preference to using an immediately-available automated system. They are just too hard to use without the training that store staff get in all the little options and details, and they are too unreliable, frequently shouting (incorrect) things at you about putting unexpected items in the wrong places or not recognising your card/voucher/whatever. Amusing anecdote for this one: the other day I went into the store, and in the time that one trained staffer got through six customers on a "basket only" aisle, one customer with a single basket was still trying to get one of those infernal machines to work properly, with three different store staff called over to help by the time I left. Most important of all, though, is if anything goes wrong. Then I want to speak to a real person who is right in front of me, listening to what I say, and able to do something about it. No automated system is ever going to replace that, and I won't deal with companies that don't even try. In short, if you want to build customer satisfaction, make the routine things easy, automate where it works, but always provide good personal service as a back-up.

by samdk 16y ago

astine 16y ago

I agree and disagree with you here. I think the kiosk/Internet verses customer-rep/ call choice is actually a convenience issue more than it is a relationship issue. However, I really do think that the whole relationship with a huge multinational thing is overblown. What does it even mean to have a relationship with a company? When I have a relationship with a person, it means that we know each other, have an understanding of each other, possibly we're friends. Companies however are collectives. I can't possibly acquaint myself with every member of a large company nor can they be expected to all acquaint themselves with me. A company can keep a file on me, tracking what I've with them and who I've talked to, which is sort of a relationship, but not really. They can also appoint someone to be my dedicated representative, but the rep can't represent the company in all of it's aspects. I think that the nitty gritty of it is that for the most part, my transactions with corporations are ephemeral. If I end up building a relationship over them, then something is wrong. I don't want a relationship with Dell (for example) I just want to buy a computer. If I have to talk to their tech support, that means something went wrong. I'd be nice if my bank's representatives were friendly and polite with me, and if they were helpful, etc, but I don't really care if they remember my name. Already have friends, I don't need a bank to be one too.

dagw 16y ago
I don't want a relationship with Dell (for example) I just want to buy a computer. I don't know. Back when I had a job which required me buying lots of hardware it was really nice to have the phone number to a sales person who knew my name. Most of the time it didn't add too much over using a web page, but occasionally I'd have to make a call and say something like "look I know your web page says the delivery time for Widget is 5-7 days, but I really need one this afternoon, can you help me out?" And most of the time they'd pull some strings and work something out and a courier would show up with the Widget I needed. I'd never get that sort of service if I didn't have a relationship with the salesperson at the company.
- matwood 16y ago
  That's the only experience I've ever had with Dell and I always thought their CS was fine ;) When you're buying 100s or 1000s of computers from them the level of service they give is much better than the person buying the single $300 laptop.

Silhouette 16y ago

> Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship". Exactly. I think the underlying issue here isn't so much automated vs. personal, it's just good service vs. bad service, or if you prefer, effective vs. ineffective communication. Telephone service is usually the worst: tedious automated menus, up-front warnings about recording this and invalidating that if you so much as breathe during the call, long (or worse, unknown) queuing times, and then you just get to speak to someone who can't deviate from their script to help you, assuming you can even understand what they say if they're based in some far-away call centre where employment is cheap and accents are strong. Neither the automated aspects nor the personal ones are much good here, though I've noticed a trend in the past couple of years for some companies to make a marketing point that they do have local call centres with real people answering the phone and very short queuing times. Personal favourite anecdote for poor telephone service: I once had to call a credit card company to notify them that someone had been acting suspiciously with my card in a restaurant in a foreign country and I thought they might be trying to double-charge me. The card company left me on hold for so long -- calling from abroad on a mobile phone -- that my phone battery was starting to die and I lost the call, though of course not the charge for it. Since they clearly don't take security seriously, I now use a different credit card. In contrast, automated on-line services often work fairly well these days: all of the banks, investment firms, etc. I work with have decent web sites, they basically work, they're reasonably easy to use, and they let me do what I want to do quickly. For some things, I would still rather use a real person, though. For example, I am quite tall, so if I'm booking seats for any sort of show in a venue I haven't been to before, I usually still prefer to call or visit the booking office and ask them about which seats have enough leg room, even if the company has an otherwise excellent web site for ticket reservations. The most striking example of preferring personal service I know is that several of the supermarkets in my area have recently installed self-service checkouts, where you scan all your own items and pay at the end. Typically there are just a couple of store staff supervising a whole set of these, instead of one staffer per checkout aisle. However, unless you're just buying one or two things, almost everyone seems to have these infernal machines and will join a queue of half a dozen people for a staffed checkout in preference to using an immediately-available automated system. They are just too hard to use without the training that store staff get in all the little options and details, and they are too unreliable, frequently shouting (incorrect) things at you about putting unexpected items in the wrong places or not recognising your card/voucher/whatever. Amusing anecdote for this one: the other day I went into the store, and in the time that one trained staffer got through six customers on a "basket only" aisle, one customer with a single basket was still trying to get one of those infernal machines to work properly, with three different store staff called over to help by the time I left. Most important of all, though, is if anything goes wrong. Then I want to speak to a real person who is right in front of me, listening to what I say, and able to do something about it. No automated system is ever going to replace that, and I won't deal with companies that don't even try. In short, if you want to build customer satisfaction, make the routine things easy, automate where it works, but always provide good personal service as a back-up.