Mon, Oct 5, 2009 14:48 EDT

The Importance of Follow-Up

Topic: IT Organization Management

Current Rating: Comments: 0

Recently, while reviewing the quality assurance surveys we conduct with our customers, I noticed a common thread in the comments: the importance of following up.

Here’s a sample:

“You were awesome and this follow-up e-mail speaks volumes of how wonderful your service was.”

And another:

“I was absolutely thrilled when I got an e-mail from [the consultant] the next day with tutorials. I thought that was amazing customer service. Customer service is dead these days. Your company renewed my faith in it.”

It’s standard practice here to send customers reinforcement learning tips and e-mails with topics that are related to the software issue that prompted them to call in the first place. Glass-half-empties may say it’s overkill, or that it’s akin to spamming.

With an attitude like that, no wonder customer service is dead.

In this business — outsourced software support — quality customer service isn’t just a nicety or something you’d find in Charleston; it’s critical to the health of a business. Having a measurement method in place is even more important.

A quote from an InformationWeek report that was published in June says it perfectly: “IT service assurance is something you build in to ensure that your organization’s massive IT investment is doing what business leaders want it to do.”

We couldn’t agree more. It’s a fact that if customers are treated poorly, they will hesitate to call back the next time they have an issue. Instead, they’ll ask a colleague for help and waste the time of two employees, devise clumsy workarounds, or do nothing at all. Morale will suffer too.

But if a customer is given the attention they deserve, even if it’s only for 10 minutes, they will emerge with more knowledge and a better attitude. That, in the end, isn’t a luxury; it’s good business.

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