Customer service: don’t be like the big guys. Please.

The other day I was part of a conversation about how small business want to offer the kinds of web functionality that the big guys have - online customers support and ordering, that sort of thing. It occurred to me later, though, that in my experience, small businesses tend to do a far better job at this. Maybe it’s just a string of incredibly bad experiences with online support from companies that have enough resources to do better.

• There’s Comcast, where I have spent hours trying to resolve a simple problem (and we’re still not done), finally having to escalate it to the executive level - which I could only do because some googling uncovered a web form (carefully hidden on their site) to send an email to a VP. Every support rep I’ve talked has said something different, and basically strived to end the interaction - but nobody there has taken ownership of solving the issue. (Which isn’t even complicated.)

• There’s T-Mobile; the online account management for their hotspot service is very vague about when your contract is up and what happens then (month to month? auto-renew?) and if you click “email us,” you’re forced into a form that demands to know your T-Mobile cell number and your phone model. For wireless hotspot service.

• There’s Comcast, where you log into your account, click “email us,” and then are forced to re-enter all your account information. Or you click “live chat” and again must re-enter all the information, at which point a support agent comes on and asks you all the same information again.

• There’s TXU, the power company, which resolutely refuses to accept my request for electronic billing, because they need an email address. Which I provided in the request. This response comes to me by email, via my bank.

• There’s Comcast (do we see a theme here?), which responds to email requests by telling you to please call them. What is the point of that email support feature?

• That’s at least better than T-Mobile - last time I emailed them about something, I got a canned response telling me that they are backed up on emails, so they would be ignoring mine, and if I really wanted help I should call.

• There’s AT&T… oh, I can’t even bear to get into that one.

What’s my point here? Customer service is not a function of spending a lot of money or having deep resources. That certainly helps, because it does cost money to do all of this.

But money isn’t enough. Comcast has all kinds of neat technology. The service is appallingly bad, though, because for all that technology, nobody there actually solves problems. They handle transactions, and mark them done. The individuals are often very helpful and dedicated (and sometimes not); one of them tried to save me time by giving me a work order number for my issue to give to the next person I spoke to. That was great, except that the next person said, “Work order number? Huh?”

T-Mobile has lots of technology, but it’s broken half the time, and nobody there seems to have thought, “Maybe when someone is logged into a Hotspot account, we shouldn’t give them a form to fill out that refers to mobile phone details.” (Or, better yet, “Let’s offer them all the information they could want, so they don’t even need to fill out forms or contact us.”)

Want to use service as a way to differentiate yourself? Before you spend a dime, make sure it supports this process:

1. A customer reports an issue (a problem, a question, whatever).

2. Someone internally takes ownership of solving that problem.

3. When it’s complete, the customer is informed, and then asked if they are satisfied.

That’s mind-numblingly simple, but it’s rare. It’s also, I think, much easier for smaller organizations, because the people involved in solving problems tend to be more familiar with one another.

If you can get that process working, then you’re ready to use technology to make it more efficient, more transparent, and less expensive. If you don’t have that process down, you’re putting lipstick on a pig. Very expensive lipstick on a very big pig.

(NOTE: Now that I’ve given Comcast a hard time (deservedly), I will note that they have started using social media to help deal with some of their support issues in a very proactive way, and I’m going to write about that Monday on my social media blog. I’ll post a link directly to that when it’s live.)

Photo by Skrewtape, reproduced under Creative Commons license.

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