What a brilliant idea!
Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World writes about the benefits of customer service blogs, but I don’t believe I’ve ever run across blogs dedicated to customer service.
Customer service has got to be up there with telemarketing as an unpopular career choice. Rarely, I’d imagine, do customers call service lines in a good mood. You’re calling to pay a bill, provide proof that you’ve already paid a bill despite the second notice you received, report a problem with a product, or some other not-so-pleasant reason.
With the emergence of big corporations buying out or shutting down smaller companies and Mom-and-Pop stores, owners are often bigwigs behind the corporate veil, remote, unreachable, and seemingly unconcerned about the individual irate customer.
The result? You often find yourself on the telephone with someone who doesn’t like his/her job or doesn’t really care about your problem. They don’t own the company, probably don’t care about the company’s reputation, and couldn’t care less whether you buy from XYZ, Inc. ever again. Customer satisfaction is probably not foremost in their minds, and I doubt they care whether you bad-mouth the company.
But the company suffers. Happy customers say and write good things about the company. For free. Hurlbert writes:
Many studies of word of mouth advertising have discovered that previously disgruntled customers, finding their problem resolved to their satisfaction, often become the firm’s best customer evangelists. They let the world know that your business keeps its clientele happy. Satisfied customers are any business’s best and least cost advertising and client recruitment resource.
He adds that an open and honest dialogue with customers could head off problems, and a real-time customer service blog may be the solution.
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March 12th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
The potential of customer service blogs is so great for any business that it’s only a matter of time before they appear in the blogosphere. The opportunity to prevent problems from arising, or from growing into major crises, simply can’t be ignored. Becoming known as a business that responds to customer service issues promptly and to the satisfaction of everyone involved will also lead to very good word of mouth advertising. That reflects in the bottom line making the customer service blog a financial benefit for the company as well.