All Customers Are Not Created Equal
Your contact center is suffering from unexpected staff shortage. Two queues are are in trouble. Michelle, one of your super agents is skilled in both queues. Where do you place her?
Actually, it doesn’t matter. The point is you will decide to put the agent in one of the queues, which ultimately means, for whatever reason, you will consider one queue, a set of customers, to be more important than another.
Because service and the idea of serving people has an ethical taste, it is easy to adopt a general altruistic philosophy towards customer satisfaction. As a humanist you may believe all customers should be addressed with the same attention regardless of their economic weight on the organization, however, for a business person managing limited resources, some customers are worth more than others.
Depending on your company’s priorities customer may be more important because they purchased a strategic product or because your company needs quick market share growth in a particular segment to win a positioning battle. For whatever reason, when in a resource constrained situation, some customers are in fact more equal than others.
Great customer centric organization work hard to avoid this dilemma altogether. When Customer Centricity becomes part of our corporate DNA, we begin to proactively manage the incessant pressure of limited resources, always including the customer in our business plans, our contingencies and our innovation.
Customers are resources just like cash. The difference is that customers can appreciate the value we add and the difference we make in their lives, and therefore, can offer long term loyalty.
The benefits in the transformation of corporate DNA towards customer centricity is not only external in the way customers see us, but more internal in the way we begin to see ourselves; holding ourselves to a different standard for the benefit of our customers, and therefore our own, as a member of a social group.
“Recognizing our responsibilities as industrialists, we will devote ourselves to the progress and development of society and the well-being of people through our business activities, thereby enhancing the quality of life throughout the world.” – Konosuke Matsushita, 1932
At some point we will all have to make the decision to place super agent Michelle in one queue over another, but our intention to work towards avoiding the dilemma altogether, speaks volumes about our future.
Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal
7 comments
This seems a bit passe in the sense it ignores the power of social networking to make or break a company. A set of quotes from a recent Forrester webinar illustrates:
“Social computing (aka web 2.0) is a social structure in which technology puts power in communities, an not institutions”.
Example: The blogger “predator” on Dell – just one angry guy.
- posts since 1999 – 21,794
- pages viewed – 1,111,675
- total online minutes – 473,113
Jim.
thanks for the comment.
I agree the power or web 2.0 and in particular social networking are a formidable force in the manner in which we communicate and create social momentum.
The issue I am writing about is that delimma related to the fact that all customers are not created equal, and how customer centric companies find ways around this difficult situations. Are you saying that because of social networking, the need to satisfy customers and the need to choose one over another, when resources are limit, will change? I wouold like to better understand your position.
thanks
There is also a special case where all customers must be treated exactly equall, no matter if they are, economically-seen, more important than others (i.e. they pay you more).
In a medical call center that deals with potentially life threatening incidents, there must never be preferred customers. The only preemption allowed there must be to prefer a customer in a life threatening situation over another, who is in a less severe situation. But until this distinction can be made with certainty, no preference must ever be allowed.
But of course, that is not in conflict with what you say, I merely think it’s a special case worth noting.
Ieda,
thank you for your clarifying point of view. That is so true. There are business verticals that have higher standards. At least we would hope, right?
Do hospitals make distinctions based on age? If an 80 year old is in danger along side a 15 yr old, is it a policy call or a physician’s call?
thanks again for your comment.
Rudy V
Ieda,
i believe the case of all customers MUST be treated equally only exist in the minds of consumer and in reality, most corp organizations do not practice this.
Take for example Dell, they have 2 different support tech support numbers located within the same contact centre. One is for the normal Dell customers and the other is for the Dell premium brand products XPS Line. The XPS tech support is always given priority in terms of staffs headcount,training to ensure the support given to the customers are in line with their marketing tagline.
even in hospitals, there are too many actual cases where doctors have refused to admit patients without proper insurance coverage or funds. Also dont forget why hospitals have different VIP rooms, such as the airlines (Biz Class VS economy) and Banks, etc..etc…the list goes on.
Jim is right to a certain extent on the power of the web, hence this is why myself and rudy is spending our time on our blogs, discussing customer service experience and the impact we have on large MNC.
Rudy
Great Blog you have here. gonna spend some time reading your pasts post.
Cheerios
Michael
http://www.xcarpathia.wordpress.com (customer service in malaysia)
My point is similar to Iead’s. Social networking tools are providing power to individuals; companies trying to clearly differentiate service by customer value run the risk of activating people like the Dell blogger “Predator” A theory and observation – lower value segments tend to be more easily motivated toward this type of online activism toward companies who do not give them what they want.
Have you seen http://www.comcastmustdie.com? Just another low value $35/month customer right? – staggering brand damage from one motivated individual.
Jim,
I understand your point. At the end of the game, we need to manage ALL our customers. When we marginalize one segment we run the risks you mention. The reality is all customers are not created equal but instead of marginalizing, we should find ways to serve them.
I do undestand you point. and it is a good one.
thanks
Rudy V