This is the main reason why I love Dogecoin. It is the great customer service that can be found. I do not know another cryptocurrency that offers this business function.
In addition, entrepreneurs should not dismiss the value of user-testing as part of customer service. So often a startup will have an idea for a product/service and work tirelessly to implement their vision of it without ever taking it out and testing it with users at each step in development. I've learned this lesson myself and it is surprising how often developers misunderstand their users.
The problem with customer service being 'separate' is that it quickly loses value. In that sense, OP is correct but one needs to take it further.
Once you support a customer, you are supposed to help her for more than just 2 days! You need to take it to conclusion regardless of who you are, even if it means that it takes days or weeks. The best part of that - you build a relationship with that person and if its a B2B thing then you could even add them on LinkedIn, right? ;-) Heck, you could even do some Marketing/Sales for your company and ask them for a testimonial about how good the customer service was! There are even tools for such things - Customer Rivet (http://www.customer-rivet.com), or Testimonial Monkey (http://www.testimonialmonkey.com) etc..
End of the day, what I learnt (the hard way) is that you need to support customers not just because its company policy but because it helps you out personally.
There's one Lean Manufacturing guy who talks about plant safety. He says that years ago they got a great reduction in accidents by eliminating the Safety Officer position. He explanation was basically that if just one person is responsible for something, that means everybody else feels like they can ignore it. By eliminating the position, everybody became responsible.
I guess my perspective is more from handling customers when they use our software development kits. We developed software devkits and our customers built embedded applications using silicon and software. In such a case, there is no way to get away from supporting customers because that's what we did.
I don't know if I feel the author fleshed out this conclusion enough to get his point across firmly. Sitting where I am right now I want to disagree only because a lot of his thoughts are hastily concluded and don't reflect a reality of customer service.
Already posted here user `shortsightedsid` talks about how 2 days really isn't very long to conduct "Good" customer service if you are interested in building customer relationships. A big difference between a nameless call center and personal connections is recognizing a name. Saying to Joey that you spoke with Samantha last time isn't necessarily helpful if they don't even work in the same department. Joey relies on Samantha documenting the interaction well enough that he can take off and act like he's already up to speed on the matters. Departments have their distinct advantages to the piece-by-piece solution he describes.
And even now, in my small company I'm required to field customer calls when they're technical in nature. I have my primary clients that I know quite well, I've met many of them face to face and shaken their hands but when I've got deadlines or critical issues hanging over my head I shudder each time my line rings to field another call.
The end he talks about Chess grandmasters and the dedication it takes to do it well. The analogy to me came off wrong where he advocates a jack-of-all-trades method of dealing with customer service yet insists the overall corporation should maintain a master level expertise. How does that occur without establishing a concrete set of protocols and dare I say, departments?
The idea is sound, it probably works in certain cases but overall I think the issue of customer service has been done better in the department model than the diversified one.
Non-CS people doing CS will give a worse experience in a single specific case, but will improve the overall customer experience in the long run.
I'm not arguing that companies should get rid of departments, just that they should take CS seriously. I think having all members of the team talk to customers is the best way to give the whole company an orientation toward customer service. 37signals, Stripe, and others do this too, not just Amazon.
Attitudinal topics are just some of the cross-cutting concerns, like customer service and security, that often become Tragedy of the Commons if not taken seriously. In large organizations, there does need to be a "Chief _____ Officer" for relevant concerns that has support, authority and wisdom to teach their domain and helps other departments. Not just a title, paperwork, busy work or a mandatory meeting.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 43.8 ms ] threadThere's one Lean Manufacturing guy who talks about plant safety. He says that years ago they got a great reduction in accidents by eliminating the Safety Officer position. He explanation was basically that if just one person is responsible for something, that means everybody else feels like they can ignore it. By eliminating the position, everybody became responsible.
Already posted here user `shortsightedsid` talks about how 2 days really isn't very long to conduct "Good" customer service if you are interested in building customer relationships. A big difference between a nameless call center and personal connections is recognizing a name. Saying to Joey that you spoke with Samantha last time isn't necessarily helpful if they don't even work in the same department. Joey relies on Samantha documenting the interaction well enough that he can take off and act like he's already up to speed on the matters. Departments have their distinct advantages to the piece-by-piece solution he describes.
And even now, in my small company I'm required to field customer calls when they're technical in nature. I have my primary clients that I know quite well, I've met many of them face to face and shaken their hands but when I've got deadlines or critical issues hanging over my head I shudder each time my line rings to field another call.
The end he talks about Chess grandmasters and the dedication it takes to do it well. The analogy to me came off wrong where he advocates a jack-of-all-trades method of dealing with customer service yet insists the overall corporation should maintain a master level expertise. How does that occur without establishing a concrete set of protocols and dare I say, departments?
The idea is sound, it probably works in certain cases but overall I think the issue of customer service has been done better in the department model than the diversified one.
I'm not arguing that companies should get rid of departments, just that they should take CS seriously. I think having all members of the team talk to customers is the best way to give the whole company an orientation toward customer service. 37signals, Stripe, and others do this too, not just Amazon.