Help Desks renew Customer Service focus
Written by John Towsley on May 22, 2009I recently met with four of our clients, each from a large, name brand organization.
All of these people stated that right now, their key initiatives and mandates revolve around improving Customer Service and the customer experience with respect to their Help Desk / Service Desk.
I found this to be a bit curious. Customer Service has long been a focus of a well managed service desk. Why the renewed focus in 2009?
Is this the same in your organization? Are you renewing your emphasis on customer service? Or is it just business as usual? Post a comment and tell us why!
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Adam
May 23, 2009
11:14 pm
I am surprised by your observation. I am in the hospitality industry, and I have found that my competitors are making cuts to customer service (including IT support) instead of increasing it. My thought, is that one of the easiest way to keep customers coming back is to serve them quickly, give them the shortest “on-hold” wait-times and to not skimp on good customer service. It is harder and harder to acquire customers in this environment, especially in my sector, so I want to keep the best relationships possible with the ones that I do have.
John T
May 25, 2009
8:42 am
Hey Adam,
That’s the rub. Everyone has a mandate to improve customer service levels while at the same time reducing costs. I’m wondering if the customer service focus is a knee jerk reaction to customer complaints because of the cuts. The typical ‘catch 22″.
I recently read an article on the opportunity in difficult economic times to drive success through innnovation. While ITIL is not exactly innovation it may provide clues to where innovation and automation in process can drive lower costs while improving customer service levels. The trick is to to immplement IT process improvement on a zero or close to zero based budget. I think it can be done…
Adam
May 25, 2009
11:16 am
Customer service are the ones who have to pay for the decisions made by the people above them. Agreed that improving in this environment is a challenge.
Stefanie
May 26, 2009
2:34 pm
I think people are just looking at both sides of the value equation. Seth Godin has a great post on it here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/two-halves-of-the-value-fraction.html.
He says:
Value = benefit/price. That means that one way to make value go up is to lower price, right?
The thing is, there’s another way to make the value go up. Increase what you give. Increase quality and quantity and the unmeasurable pieces that bring confidence and joy to an interaction.
When all of your competitors are busy increasing value by cutting prices, you can actually increase market share by increasing value and raising benefits.