Smoothing the Path
Customer Satisfaction Drives Revenues
By Challis Hodge
Customer service and customer relationship management (CRM) are touted as critical success factors for companies that want to seriously compete and thrive into the next decade. As technology and manufacturing fast become commodities, the customer relationship is the only area where real competitive advantage is still possible.
Ironically, there has never been a time when customer service has been more absent from our lives. When was the last time you walked into a store and were treated like an individual, with concern shown for your personal interests and needs? It was probably a long time ago.
If customer service is poor in the brick and mortar world, it's worse online. Even on sites that are well designed and usable, it's still hard to get quality customer service when you need it. If you send an email request, do you receive a quick and helpful reply? How easy is it to find a phone number to call? If you call the help line, do the customer service representatives answering the phone have any clue how you spent the last hour on their company's Web site?
This combination of high potential advantage and low-quality service has created a great opportunity for businesses that facilitate relationships between companies and customers. In fact, the hordes of venture capitalists that were pouring money into online retailers in the last few years have now switched their bets to the companies building software that improves online customer service. According to a recent study by Jupiter Research, roughly 200 venture-backed startups are now developing software to improve online customer service.<>
