Service Untitled

Seth Godin is usually regarded as a marketing guy, but he really knows his stuff when it comes to customer service. He talks about customer service a lot, too.

Seth linked to a post a week or two ago about apologies. It’s a great post and really gives readers an idea of the different levels of apologies. You have the generic ones, the sincere ones, the ones that blame others, etc. It breaks it down really well and is worth a read.

About two days ago, he linked to “Seven steps to remarkable customer service“, a great post by Joel Spolsky. While the post doesn’t give any advice that is too revolutionary, it makes a great point and is very effective. To give you a brief outline:

1. Fix everything two ways
2. Suggest blowing out the dust
3. Make customers into fans
4. Take the blame
5. Memorize awkward phrases
6. Practice puppetry
7. Greed will get you nowhere

Seth’s most recent post on customer service was entitled “Starting over with customer service.” The post definitely provides an interesting perspective on how to handle customer service.

He suggests using the receptionist system that I described in one of my posts. They are responsible for gathering all the relevant information and expressing that the problem will be solved as soon as possible. The issues are then elevated up the line and everyone that touches the ticket is responsible for solving it. If it takes more than 20 hours, an executive has to deal with it or suffer the consequences.

A commenter (actually, trackback-er) called it Customer Service 2.0. I’d call it Customer Service 1.1. The system isn’t totally new or revolutionary, but it is a different way of doing things. It is definitely different and I can see how it could be effective.

I’m not sure if his system would work for every type of company, but ones dealing with more complex issues or higher end clients, I can see it working.

What do you think of Customer Service 1.1/2.0?