I want to share with you an exchange that I had with a local contact of mine (Joanne Munro @jojomunroro) on twitter the other day following something I tweeted. Here’s the exchange:
15 Companies With Impossibly Terrible Customer Service huff.to/WcPRwt
— Adrian Swinscoe (@adrianswinscoe) January 29, 2013
@jojomunroro that’s pure class! Automated processes! You’ve got to love how they trip firms up
— Adrian Swinscoe (@adrianswinscoe) January 29, 2013
@adrianswinscoe It even had ‘reply to this email if we didn’t get back to you’. I won’t repeat what I told them about their service. rubbish
— Joanne Munro (@jojomunroro) January 29, 2013
@adrianswinscoe Telling that the sentence was even in the email. They’ve never replied to any of my help me emails. T-Mobile r good actually
— Joanne Munro (@jojomunroro) January 29, 2013
@jojomunroro ok. Maybe I’ll compile a list and write it up as a blog post.
— Adrian Swinscoe (@adrianswinscoe) January 29, 2013
Now, automation is fine and automated responses are good too but only if they are in tune with everything else that you do in your customer service and marketing function.
What, I believe, this exchange illustrates is that when one department or element of your business ‘drops the ball’ it can shine a negative light on the rest of your business and your reputation.
Timed and automated responses are fine so long as everyone does their job in the right amount of time or, in this case, does their job at all.
There is another way of doing it. One, that is a little more labour intensive but has more flexibility built in to allow for unforeseen things happening. Why not make your process like a relay race, where each part of the process passes the ‘baton’ on once they have completed their job.
Your team, process or business is still only as strong or as fast or as effective as its weakest link but at least the ‘baton’ can’t set off without the runner.
