Recently, one of my good friends showed up for dinner noticeably frustrated and needing to vent. He was having serious problems with his home wireless network — enough to drive any of us over the edge — and his provider had added insult to injury. He had multiple support tickets outstanding trying to get help with his modem from the company in question and was happy to receive a direct call from the company only a couple hours prior to our dinner. Except that the representative on the line was calling to try to sell him an unlimited data plan for his mobile phone. This was the same company as his home internet service, which was still not working and causing major headaches, and they’re calling to upsell him on a mobile plan. He was ready to write off the entire company already, and then they called to interrupt his day and sell him something unrelated to solving his problem.
In the year 2018, with technology that allows for real-time account updating across multiple sets of data, there’s no excuse for this. Software should work in such a way that makes all data on a particular customer accessible from one place, with alerts that notify a sales rep if a customer has outstanding issues, as was the case with my friend. Instead, the sales rep was set up for failure and not just failure to make a sale: Significant harm was done to the brand. Repeated modem malfunctions are bad enough, add a sales rep that only cares about upselling, and you’ve created an outraged customer who will surely tell all his friends how this company mistreated him.
Anyone who has ever dealt with tone-deaf customer service can relate to the frustration my friend experienced. As conglomerates grow larger with more and more subsidiaries, the potential for this kind of situation increases.
Part of the problem is that, historically, data has existed in silos within organizations. Customer service is often a different department than sales, and when companies merge, often the customer database is the last thing integrated, if it’s done at all. So while all of the necessary information to put together a complete customer profile exists, it’s completely disparate. As soon as a merger or acquisition is announced, customers tend to assume they’re dealing with one company and expect representatives of that company to know what’s going on. When those expectations aren’t met, it tarnishes the brand. The customer feels that the company is, at best, incompetent and unorganized and, at worst, unconcerned with customer welfare and only out to make a buck.
The only solution is for companies to embrace a customer-centric culture, which includes integrating data about a customer's history throughout and across various silos and then requires that company representatives familiarize themselves with each customer’s needs before reaching out. Every contact and conversation must demonstrate that the company is aware of the customer’s needs. The technology already exists to make this happen -- it’s a cultural shift that’s needed. The most forward-thinking companies will make this shift on their own, in recognition that it’s both the right thing to do and also that it’s in their financial self-interest. For the rest, they will learn from making mistakes and facing consumer backlash. As more companies become proficient at integrating context, consumers will demand it from all companies.
Some argue that integrating customer context from various sources can lead to privacy violations, and that’s a valid concern. No one wants to talk to a customer service rep that knows so much that it’s creepy. The solution to that problem is actually the same as the solution to the lack of context problem: Every choice regarding data, context and privacy that a company makes must be made by considering what’s in the best interest of the customer.
The utopian version is this: A service company understands who you are based on a dynamic profile of you that includes your search history and online behavior plus your demographic data, your purchase history and what problems you’ve had in the past. You call that company after seeing an online ad that interests you, and as the phone is ringing the company’s software automatically matches you to an agent based on your personality who knows about the particular ad you're calling about and pulls up past buying and support ticket experiences. The agent has all the tools needed to tell you if the product or service is right for you or to recommend something different. It’s a win-win for everyone. There’s no reason that we can’t make this version our reality.
