All projects: Gel, Jobs, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Blog, Bit Literacy
Is customer experience a chore or a passion?
From the current New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes about customer service:
C.E.O.s routinely describe service as essential to success, and they are well aware that, thanks to the Internet, bad service can now inflict far more damage than before; the old maxim was that someone who had a bad experience in your store would tell ten people, but these days it's more like thousands or even, as in Carroll's case, millions.On the other hand, customer service is a classic example of what businessmen call a "cost center"--a division that piles up expenses without bringing in revenue--and most companies see it as tangential to their core business, something they have to do rather than something they want to do.
Oh, the bitter medicine of having to actually serve the customer. Is this really how most companies consider the customer experience - a necessary chore? The winning companies of this century will be those who make customer experience their passion, their central driver of strategy, their reason for being. (This includes customer service - and all other aspects of the entire customer experience.)
To put it another way, "The purpose of a business is to create a customer." That's what Peter Drucker said. He knew how companies became successful.
Are companies willing to take Drucker's advice and focus on creating and keeping customers? Or is customer experience just a chore that takes time away from the fun stuff?
