Jeffrey on the Customer Service Challenge in Forbes.com

 A sneak peek into the research we’ve been doing with Agency.com.  Interesting findings on email in particular.

Comments

[Russ Pillar]

Fascinating work here; I am eager to learn more once the study is finalized. I would suspect that there is a more direct correlation between the price of a good (as opposed to its complexity) and its attendant level of support, which is understandable--though terribly shortsighted--on the part of merchants.

What competition at the service level really informs is customer satisfaction, so the real gain to sellers might be less the margin retained by migrating customers to lower priced channels and, instead, more the advantage gained when a satisfied customer decides to form loyalty to a company or a brand attributable to a satisfying experience (regardless of channel) and rewards that brand or business with a repeat purchase. If that's true, then it would be interesting to explore how dramatically a good customer experience (especially in light of all of the bad ones out there, which are particularly prevalent as companies use email/chat/call centers to lower cost as opposed to improve service) is responsible for driving positive repeat behavior. I, for one, am happy to pay a premium--and to reward a company with my repeat business--just to know that, if I have a problem, there is an effective way for me to solve it in a reasonable amount of time.

In short, it's virgin territory out there, and the companies who provide a better solution (regardless of whether or not they're saving the most money by leveraging the cheapest channel immediately) have the best chance of locking-in customers as customers' new (and soon to be life-long) multi-channel habits are being formed.