“The Bangalore Backlash”: Customer service returning to the fore! |

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04/24
2009

“The Bangalore Backlash”: Customer service returning to the fore!

Some folks think a tight economy means things have to get cheaper. No; things have to get worthy.

Our VP/Marketing Cindy Johnson just steered me to Ragsdale’s Eye on Service, the blog of John Ragsdale, formerly of Forrester Research’s Giga Information Group where he focused on customer relationships and customer service. He’s often railed against the concept of free service, arguing that it’s not sustainable.

Trouble is, it’s hard to tell how low people will go to save a buck, even when it’s not in their/our best interest. We want America’s economy strong, including our local economies, but we keep buying Chinese goods from megastores that put local stores out of business. And who can blame the merchants, if consumers keep going for cheap?

That is, until people say “That’s it, you’ve scraped bottom” and vote with their feet.

And perhaps we are hitting bottom. In December Ragsdale wrote about how people are starting to pay for support from people whose voices they can understand, or people nearby — including mighty brands, not known for being the cheapest bidder:

I just read a Washing[ton] Post article The Bangalore Backlash: Call Centers Return to U.S. which hits on enough controversies to keep me blogging for a month. Let’s start with this one: Dell’s new Your Tech Team service, which provides a US-based support engineer and a wait time of 2 minutes or less for $13 a month or $99 a year. Add to that Apple’s successful in-store Genius Bar and Best Buy’s in your face Geek Squad, I suspect that 2009 will be the year Value-Added Support has crossed from enterprise to consumer support. And it is about time.

Personally, I think Dell ended free support a long time ago. Sure, they offer free support, but it’s not support – it can be destructive. Just last month a relative clicked some virus-laden link and crashed his machine. He called Dell’s free line for help, and without any discussion, the rep led him through reformatting his disk, losing all his data.He thought that might be happening, but couldn’t believe it.

My first thought was “How could they possibly do that??” Then I remembered they tried that with me, years ago. I was savvy enough to say “You want me to WHAT??” Not long after, I started using paid support.

I call it “actual support.”

In fact I’m typing this on an older Dell machine that’s out of warranty … and I’m going to go get that $99 annual plan right now.(Last time I tried their free stuff it was via live chat, and when I logged in it said “You are #497 in line.” I’m not making this up.)

I hope we’ve indeed scraped bottom, such that people are willing to pay for competence, rather than take something free that doesn’t work.You won’t get through the downdraft by being cheaper, you’ll make it by genuinely being worthy. Deliver value. Be good to your customers.

Posted by cterry

Filed under: online scheduling

Tagged: customer service, downturn, economy