Why is Good Customer Service a term which so many companies fail to understand? A concept so simple and so commonsensical, & yet it most often gets lost in complex matrices and spreadsheets, pie charts and numbers!

Good Customer service

Before I march on, it must be noted that I DONT have a PhD in customer service, & it’s not on my future roadmap either.. Well, ironically, may be that’s what makes this post all the more important. I am the CONSUMER who has spent hours behind a phone hoping to get good customer service, while “my records are being retrieved” by a customer rep, who in surprisingly many cases knows less about the company he / she works for then I do ( that’s pretty unfortunate actually…) Well, this post is not supposed to be a rant on how customer service at most places is pathetic, so let’s move on..

Just like [geek start] good programming code is measured in terms of how it handles the unexpected inputs, and mathematic formulas are measured in terms of ‘boundary conditions’ [/geek end], the true test of customer service is how the customers are managed and informed when the unexpected happens.

Keeping it to a purely e-commerce point of view, what matters is how well you keep the customers up to date when the product they ordered is suddenly Out Of Stock! Or, how do you treat a worried customer when the courier can’t be tracked. (i.e. do you ask them to call up the courier service, or do you do it for them?)

Note # 1

The only thing I am not sure about is the scalability of this idea, but for now, it doesn’t really matter.. We are a startup, and “small” would be a big word to define our size! Since the launch of TheWisdomCart.com, we have been enjoying interacting with customers on one to one basis, and keeping them informed is our top priority!

Credits:

Cartoon taken from putsimply.wordpress.com