Customer Service News

• Customers in Mexico are the least tolerant of global consumers of poor customer service, followed by Australians, Canadians, and then Americans, according to a recent survey.  [Insider Retailing]
• U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation that requires companies to tell customers if calls are routing to offshore reps.  [TMCnet]
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina became the latest service organization to launch a smart phone app for customers.  [Charlotte Observer]
• The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed requiring telecom carriers to proactively alert customers to trending high bills.  [Washington Post]
• Airlines are increasingly using Twitter to communicate travel updates to customers.  [The Star]
• High customer satisfaction with technical support is closely linked to new technology implementation, according to a recent study.  [CRN]
• Angry customers will go to extremes—driving across three states—to resolve a service issue.  [WLBT]

Customer Service News

• On the product recall front, Fisher-Price will recall 10 million products, including a tricycle [WSJ]
• Land’s End is the first among apparel retailers to launch a video chat option for its customers  [PR Newswire]
• Can companies afford to ignore customer voice in social media channels?  Tim Weber says no. [BBC]
• Fast food companies experiment with self-service at their restaurants – would you rather order your burger from a kiosk or a person? [Self-ServiceWorld]
• Starbucks to begin a university training for its employees, which may look similar to McDonald’s Hamburger University  [Telegraph]
• Best Buy to extend Twelpforce from Twitter to other social media networks, including Facebook [internet Retailer]
• A number of stats confirming what we’ve suspected: Twitter is a broadcast medium [ReadWriteWeb]
• Why the NBC show ‘Outsourced’ is behind the times – and why that is less than comforting news [NYT]

I’m a consistent viewer of NBC Thursday night TV, so I probably would have given the new show “Outsourced” a chance even if my job had nothing to do with customer service.  My experience in customer service, though, did make me a tougher critic.  While most professional critics have focused on the cultural and economic aspects of the show (reviews are mixed, at best), my focus here is mainly call center specific.

As a quick background for those who did not watch the show: the premise is that an American novelty company has run into financial difficulty, so they cut costs by sending their call center operations—and one American manager—to India.  The main dynamic for the manager is that of a stranger in a strange land – experiencing the TV-version of India for the first time.  What ensues is an in-your-face barrage of crude humor that is as subtle as a jackhammer.  This being TV, I expected everything to be exaggerated for the sake of gaining a few extra laughs, though I’d argue that the writers beat my expectations. Read More »

Customer Service News

• Kenmore washers and dryers now communicate directly with customer service reps via revolutionary technology. [PR Newswire]
• Interview with British Telecom (BT) director of social media on using Twitter for customer service  [Econsultancy]
• Anticipating the Christmas online retail season(and next week’s National Customer Service week), 22% of surveyed Australian adults say the online service they received did not meet expectations. [IT Wire]
• Rosetta Stone takes its customer service to Facebook. [Internet Retailer]
• According to a new study, teens engage in a disproportionate amount of word-of-mouth promotion [Adweek]
• How businesses are using social media to empower their employees [Mashable]
• Review finds NBC’s “Outsourced” way behind the times. [Fierce CIO]

This is a guest post by Vanessa North of the  Communications Executive Council, our sister program for communications leaders and their teams. While applicable to all employees in a company, it’s got some great tips for contact centers whose employees are contantly multi-tasking with technology as they work with customers.

I  just got back from a glorious ten days in Croatia (which by the way, I would HIGHLY recommend– totally beautiful and so far, unspoiled) and now that I’m back, I am noticing more than ever the constant bombardment of information, emails, & instant messages that distract me from doing any true thinking.  Matt Richtel has coined the term the “three-day effect” when you are away from all technology and distraction.  After three days you start to relax, sleep better, and lose that nervous twitch of checking your blackberry every 3 seconds.  This is probably why the average weekend just doesn’t feel long enough; you get close to relaxing and then get pulled back to reality with a thump.

The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times per hour.  Think of what that means in terms of how much information that you are subjecting yourself to on a daily basis.  It’s no wonder we hear, “I haven’t had time to think” so often.  It is only when you actually stop reading and taking in new information that you can sit back and really think what it all means, and actually process it.  By constantly rushing from one idea to the next without giving ourselves the time to think, we aren’t giving ourselves time to know what we really think.  I’m probably not the only one who sits there and has revelations when I’m on holiday.  You realize opinions you never knew you had.  You make life-changing decisions (or at least come up with the ideas for them).  In short, you think.

So as companies are striving to add more channels to reach their employees from all angles– are we actually doing more harm than good?  Read More »

Customer Service News

• Interview with L.L. Bean’s President on top-notch customer service (Hint: Treat customers like human beings) [National Retail Federation]
• Does social media introduce a new social customer relationship management (sCRM) system?  [Fast Company]
• Diaspora, a Facebook competitor, has been released [TechCrunch]
• Domino’s executive personally visits customer who complained about substandard pizza via social media [NYT]
• The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, explains 4 concerns about the mobile web [ReadWriteWeb]
• Using smartphone’s GPS to provide location-based customer service – an idea ahead of its time or the next big thing? [BusinessWorld]
• Google will ad social networking elements to its search and product offerings, starting this fall [WSJ, subscription required]

Customer Service News

• Hotel chains turning to video games, improv comedy to improve customer service [NYT]
• YouTube will begin testing a live-streaming platform this week [YouTube]
• The case to align corporate communications and customer service – and a great example of why CCC’s concept of experience engineering is so powerful [PR Week]
• Taking a look at the reasons businesses need a mobile commerce strategy [Mashable]
• Steve Rubel thinks Google Instant has ‘killed’ search engine optimization… [Steve Rubel]
• But Econsultancy disagrees – SEO will have to change, but won’t die off [Econsultancy]
• Depositing checks virtually via your iPhone is the latest in banking customer services [NYT]
• The lowdown on U.S. Congressional proposals to enact legislation that will define new rules for outsourcing [NetworkWorld]
• Starting a new company?  Here are some tips for your customer service strategy [ReadWriteWeb]
• Amazon is reducing customer effort, incentivizing its ‘frustration-free’ packaging – but the going is slow [NYT]

I want to start a discussion on what innovation means in the context of the customer service world by telling you a tale of two cities (or in this case, two banks). This will move us closer to understanding what innovation might mean, specifically in the banking industry, but we can apply the principles to any industry. And think about these examples from the perspective of a customer service executive and also from the viewpoint of a regular customer.

Story #1–A few weeks ago I left the Holborn tube stop in central London on the way to work and it was the grand opening of Metro Bank in London, the first new consumer bank in the U.K. in more than a century. I had seen the signs for the new bank since I walk by it every day on the way to work but beyond the advertisements (the bank is open early & late and open seven days a week) I hadn’t given it more than a glancing thought.

But what was going on for this new bank opening wasn’t your typical ribbon cutting ceremony (although that happened too). It was a carnival atmosphere with free popcorn, performers on stilts wearing costumes in the bank’s brand colours, a shoe shine stand was setup, and there were balloons everywhere. I watched both tourists and office workers get caught up in the excitement.

I wondered what all the hoopla was about. It’s just another bank right?

Read More »

Customer Service News

• If there’s one thing you should read today, it’s this Economist piece on the value of data-mining social networks [Economist]
• The Washington Post has suspended sports columnist Mike Wise for a Twitter hoax he started last week in an attempt to illustrate how bad information can spread rapidly through the medium [NYT]
• Facebook has patented an algorithm for social search [Mashable]
• Survey respondents agree: America (and her customer service representatives) are getting ruder [Adweek]
• MediaPost explains why the Wall Street Journal’s “expose” on tracking consumer behavior on the web is nothing to fear [MediaPost]
• Taking a look at the sea change in American demographics, expected to be confirmed by results of this year’s Census [AdAge]
• Has poor customer service contributed to the climate of frustration in America? [New Yorker]
• Why ‘innovation machines’ are key for large enterprises [Economist]
• Travel industry leading the charge to connect with customers on Facebook and Twitter? [USA Today]

Customer Service News

• Will Nordstrom’s online, customer-facing integration of store and warehouse inventory pay off? Sources say yes. [New York Times]
• Facebook’s informal valuation is now as high as $33.7 billion [FT]
• EMarketer estimates that 28% of the American public will access the web from smartphones in 2010, up from 17% in 2008 [Adweek]
• Intuit will launch new credit card platform for iPhone [Mashable]                       
• …while Consumer Reports pushes for more fraud protection on mobile payments platforms [ReadWriteWeb]                                      
• Throwing cold water on the smartphone hype [Mashable]                                           
• An in-depth analysis of the spread of Twitter in the first few years of the service’s life [Hubspot]                                   
• Pew study finds that social media use has nearly doubled for internet users 55 and up [Mashable]               
• Only 1.2% of executives say it is important to use social media channels to offer customer service [Marketing Profs]                                 
• Are consumers becoming desensitized to product recalls? [AdAge]
• CFI report shows decline in offshore contact centers for the second year running [Business Wire]