There you go, Kim! They think once you have deposited your money, that they are doing you a favor with any services! They do not have a clue about Customer Service.
I quite agree. It's all about providing a holistic, consistent customer experience: not treating people nicely in the showroom or online, then herding them away like pests when it comes to follow-up service.
Boy, do I wish banks in particular would learn some lessons about this.
Great tutorial, Kim. Very clear and specific information on the value of Smarter Commerce.
To your point of Call Centers, I fully agree that the design of Smarter Commerce - which is increasing value/customer revenues is the driver, not cost savings alone. Most of the current Call Centers consolidate the cost of answering the calls and customer transactions - which is a long way from value-added customer-centric service. (Note: Some utilities actually measure the productivity of their Call Center employees by the physical time they spend answering calls and reward how quickly they finish the call; they also measure even the bathroom breaktimes of their employees.)
That certainly does not put a high value on the customer. The smart and successful companies of the future will complete the full cycle of service to the customer from sales to service and build loyalty and retention. A Smarter Commerce design will deliver better customer service - as measured by the customer!
That's short-sighted. Call centers should be viewed as an important point of engagement -- although one often gets the impression, as a customer, that they're designed mainly to get rid of you.
I've been thinking lately about using call centers as a means of gathering customer intelligence. Most companies struggle to get good customer feedback. And yet call centers are places where customers are giving feedback, and yet companies view call centers as a cost centers, where customers need to be shuffled off the phone as quickly as possible.
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The US National Security Agency learned the hard way that it can be dangerous to give a contractor too much money and access, with too little scrutiny. The NSA and other government agencies hire tens of thousands of contractors
a year to analyze data. Edward Snowden -- who revealed himself as the NSA leaker after fleeing the country -- was one such contractor, reportedly holding a $122,000 salaried position at Booz Allen Hamilton at the time of his departure.
Midsize businesses rarely achieve the same standards of security in their own datacenters as professional providers that specialize in delivering these services to organizations.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
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