Listen. Do You Want to Know a Secret?

 

Despite all the money poured into technologies for customer care, customer service is still as bad as ever. Why? It's not that companies have gotten worse at serving their customers--it's just that the Internet economy has made customers much more demanding.

While technology has made it easier for customers to receive better service, technology alone does not guarantee that customers will get better service. Only you can do that. But to provide better service, you don't have to pay expensive consultants millions of dollars a year just to let them tell you how to provide better service. Just ask your customers what matters most to them:

Do you listen to your customers?
Answer this simple question: Do you take the time to listen to your customer's concerns and work through their problems?

"How come your operators are so great at cross-selling me complementary products and up-selling me more expensive stuff, but can't ever seem to find my missing orders nor refund me for purchases that I don't want anymore?" -- Cassie M, Wellington, Florida

Everyone seems to be focusing so much on automating customer care that most companies tend to forget to actually care for the customer. When things go well, companies take pride in their ability to pull up a customer's entire buying history in the split-second after the call is made. But when the website goes down, why it is that the …

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