THINK CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT; NOT CUSTOMER SERVICE

Has your company moved from enabling customer self service to empowering customers? Notice these customer empowerment trends. How many of them are in play in your organization?

1. We are investing in providing better self-service tools:

• across the customer's lifecycle (plan, explore, learn, evaluate, decide, buy, learn, use, improve, enhance, replenish/renew/update, or replace)
• across interaction channels/touchpoints (Web, email, phone, PDA, point of sale)   
• across direct and indirect sales, distribution, fulfillment and service personnel, and ecosystem partners

2. We are investing resources and time in improving search, navigation, findability, and content quality for our customer-touching Web sites and portals, as well as our knowledgebases, online product catalogs, and e-tools and resources in all the languages with which our customers and partners interact with us.

3. We are developing "smarter" products--products and services that can gather data, provide feedback, monitor their own performance and report their status and usage; products and services that "know" who owns them, and what support, update or subscription services they're entitled to receive; products and services with which customers interact directly; products and services that "phone home," to provide and receive updates.

4. We're converging our previously silo'd and specialized customer support organizations into "single point of contact" cross-functional customer support organizations. We are combining support for business issues (quotes, orders, contracts, credit approval, financing, licenses, maintenance agreements) with our support for usability or technical issues (is this the right solution for my needs, will this solve my problem, will this work with/go with what I already own, what are the possible downsides, e.g., tax consequences, hidden costs? How do I use this to do X? Why isn't this working? Did I do something wrong? Can you help? How can I improve my performance/utilization? How can I reap greater benefits?).

5. We're building out and nurturing customer communities--communities of customers who share a common context and common outcomes, customers who are willing to engage with us and to help each other.

I see these five trends as the building blocks for an integrated customer empowerment strategy.

If you're engaging in one or more of these activities, you're moving away from customer support and customer self-service to EMPOWERING customers and empowering your employees to empower customers.  You're investing in giving customers the tools they need to help themselves and one another, to find what they need, to get things done, and to improve their performance. You're (re)aligning your organizations to empower customers to help them achieve their desired outcomes.

Comments

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I could not refrain from commenting. Perfectly written!

[Patty Seybold]

Lidia,
Thanks for your kind comments. I visited your blog.. it's great! I understand enough French to keep up (I attended the Lycee Moliere in Paris when I was 10 and 11) but not enough to comment in French.. OK for me to add my two cents in English??

You raise a good question. Here's my "seat of the pants" take...cost-conscious customers, including bargain hunters need a particular brand promise/customer experience. What they care about and value is always knowing they got the best deal and never feeling ripped off (to use an American vernacular term). The areas of customer experience they tend to care about most, in my experience are:

1. the ease of comparison shopping--making sure I am getting the best deal (the internet is great for that, but you can make it easier, as Progressive Insurance does in the States, by honestly listing your competitors' prices up front, and the things you offer that they may not.

2. The ease and time in rebate/coupon processing--this is an area that many companies don't focus on enough--it frustrates and annoys lots of customers.. There are two aspects to coupons/rebates that ALL customers find annoying.. one is making sure you're getting the BEST DEAL (see point 1 above); the second is not having to jump thru hoops to take advantage of the promotion.. In my book, I describe how Staples streamlined rebate processing in the States as a good example of how to please cost-conscious customers and build your brand image.

3. The cost and efficiency of returns handling. Cost conscious customers are much more likely to buy and return products if they find a better deal, change their mind or just don't like them that much. They favor suppliers who don't charge extra for shipping and handling and who don't make them jump thru hoops, (e.g. phone for a Merchandise Return Authorization code). My advice is to streamline the returns process (e.g. eliminate extra phone calls, include a return/exchange label, etc.), but make sure that the return-happy customer DOES pay for the additional shipping/handling costs.

[Lidia]

I agree with everything that's in your blog. I'm a fan of the customer centric & cocreation business model (your blog is one of my favourite) and would like to influence my customers here in France through my advices and my blog. I have a question concerning your opinion about hard discount and low cost companies and their capabilities (in term of costs) to deliver customer service and perhaps empowerment. Isn't the customer centric concept antynomic with hard discount, because those customers are only interested with low prices ?