By Francis Moran
“Angry phone calls are your friend,” writes Seth Godin in a blog post today. “They’re your friend because the alternative is angry tweets and angry blog posts.”
I agree so completely I’ve already tweeted this post of Godin’s.
But I think companies should have more holistic approaches to customer satisfaction and service for good business reasons that go beyond fear of being slagged on the ‘net. We write about this a lot here at inmedialog so forgive me for sounding a bit like a broken record.
Superior customer service is the only sustainable competitive advantage available to most companies. If you have a technology advantage, your product will swiftly be reverse-engineered, or the next refinement by a competitor will leapfrog over it. If you have a price advantage, outsourcing and off-shoring will swiftly erode it.
If you treat your customers better than your competitors do, however, you will build and expand an advantage than no one will be able to take away from you.
Don’t treat your customers properly just because you’re afraid they’ll write nasty things about you on Twitter or on blogs. Treat them properly because it’s the surest way they’ll stay customers.
[tag] Customer service, Seth Godin [/tags]
