How customer service can impact your brand

Posted by Laura Bergells

February 21, 2007

Wow! I just enjoyed a great telephone customer service experience with tech support for a web hosting company!

I know! It sounds like a fairy tale! But it actually happened!

A client called and asked if I could pinch hit a web problem while his webmaster was out of town. The client gave me his web host’s name and toll-free tech support line, and asked ME to stay on hold until I got the minor problem resolved.

(Like most folks, my client hates talking to tech support: the hold time, the ‘tude, the runaround — everything.)

So I dialed, got the automated message, and then I heard something different than usual. The automated voice said something like: ”Your estimated hold time is 13 minutes. Instead of waiting, you can have us call you back when a technical support representative becomes available. There is no charge for this service…”

I think the “we’ll call you” approach is a nice touch. It says “We respect your time.”

However, 13 minutes is not a super long time, so I put the phone on speaker and went about completing other work. When the representative came on the line about 10 minutes later, I explained my client’s problem and asked her to fix it.

She said she would love to, but that my client wasn’t her client! Turns out the webmaster had switched hosting companies a while back, and my client either forgot or didn’t know.

Now, you could argue that **I should have** looked up my client’s hosting company online before I made the call… but I just took his word for it without checking.

The nice customer service woman did what I should have done — looked up the correct host — and gave me their name.

Now, there was nothing in it for this web hosting company — they could have said, “Sorry, not our problem” — and hung up. But instead, she seemed to honestly care that I had a problem that she could help.

I don’t know a darn thing about this company. That one 15 minute phone call was my only contact — but I was impressed with their customer service. The interaction seemed to say, “We know about technology and we care about you.”

That’s one powerful brand message!

(And because I was impressed with that one facet of the company, I do not mind telling you the company is at http://valueweb.com/ . No, they didn’t pay me or ask me to mention them. I can’t even recommend their services, since I have never used their services, other than that one toll-free phone call.)

It seems that this company “gets” that providing great customer service has more positive brand impact than crafting a press release, arranging some sort of publicity stunt, or sweating endlessly over a logo presentation.

In fact, how you treat your customers has more impact on your brand value than anything else you do.

Treating customers badly by putting them on hold for an hour before they get to talk to an unhelpful technical rep is seriously eroding the brand value of tons of tech and communication companies. It’s eroding the image of the entire industry. And I know that many customer service managers are comfortable doing it because…hey, bad customer service is has become the industry standard. And everybody knows it.

It’s absolutely time to change that approach. Customer service is a serious brand and marketing function. Tech and communication companies can shine if they differentiate themselves on customer service alone.

Who else wants to see tech/comm companies seriously compete on which company can provide ”the best customer service experience”?