I waited 35 minutes on hold to get to a customer service person of my cable provider, RCN. Is that an acceptable wait time? Yes it is if you are almost a monopoly. Sure, the cable company is not a true monopoly like my electric company is (don’t get me started)- I could call up another provider and have them install my service….next week, but in all practical purposes I am captured by my current provider.
Offering good customer service is not for every business. You should only provide good service if it makes sense in your economic model. For a monopoly, the cost of good service makes no sense at all. The customer almost has to use you or the switching costs are so high, it makes sense not to add additional people or infrastructure to have great service. The expense is not worth the return on customer retention.
For the rest of us, customer service needs to be in our company DNA if we are to thrive in this recession.
What do you think?
I think it is necessary to better define what you mean by “customer service” and specifically “good” service.
I personally believe good customer service, though, is like integrity: I suppose you could sacrifice it, but it will come back and bite you later. Even a so-called “monopoly” can be put out of business tomorrow by some new idea. Wherever customers are just waiting for an opportunity to jump ship, there is someone out there who is trying to find a way to take them from you.
If a company finds providing good customer service to be cost-prohibitive I would ask two questions:
1.) What is the cost of losing your customers?
2.) Can you redefine “good customer service” into something that is more affordable?
Yes, Brian- definition is the key! I believe it is whatever the customer says it is!
Hi there,
As a serving Police Officer currently working on projects that centre around ‘customer satisfaction’ this is a really good question for me!
Most of the Public Sector is in this monopoly position; if you are the victim of a crime, you HAVE to use the local Police so what benefit does huge investment in PR/Satisfaction work yield ? You, as a customer, can’t go anywhere else. If you complain, you still get the same service you complained about, but a second time around.
Our budget gets no bigger if we catch more criminals, and no smaller if we don’t (generally anyway). Our income is generally guaranteed so what is the loss if service is poor?
The question that I am struggling with, is how do we measure satisfaction when we are necessary and customers have no free market choice (if service is in fact important in a monopoly). In fact, poor performance (crime going up)leads to increased demands for service. So if we charged for ‘call outs’ tomorrow for example, only by doing a bad job could we increase our ‘turnover’.
Many Forces and a lot of the Public Sector strive to be ‘excellent’/’centres of excellence’ and ‘are committed’ to lots of wonderful things. But why should we not just strive to perform at an acceptable level? Do the public want to pay for excellence in all their policing, or none of it ? When can they make that choice ? Who in fact makes that choice ?!
Any comments welcome
@David this is exactly why I say that monoploies don’t need to give good customer service- it makes no economic sense!
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