High-Tech’s Killer App? Service

Technology companies are always striving to innovate, right? It’s a core tenet of any successful technology company.  In many sectors it has even become a survival instinct and a survival tactic.

But the really smart companies understand that a focus on innovation has to include customer service. That is the way to thrive, and the evidence is all around us that there are successful, and not so successful, ways to approach and innovate how you provide customer service that will truly benefit your bottom line.

While calling for and identifying the trending of “social customer relationship management tools,” a study by Accenture found that companies are struggling to figure it out, finding that while 60 percent of high-tech companies believed that reducing a given product’s costs positively impacted customer service, the customers reported no real improvements. Do you always buy the cheapest?

Where did they go wrong? Here’s a clue.

A different study by IDC Manufacturing conducted a broad survey of 125 high-tech companies published last November. One question went this way: “What were your company’s top 3 business priorities over the past two years?”

The top answer was cost containment, at 45 percent. Next was improving margins, 20 percent. Third was improving customer service, 10 percent. Ten percent. “Other” was just a few doors down at five percent.

We know that online customer service strategies are evolving rapidly, which in my view is a great thing as long as we don’t leave the customer behind. Of these strategies, did you know that if you place a Q.R., a Quick Response code, on your product or service, customers with a smartphone app can use the code to download additional company information, like how to access your customer service?

And if you pursue online customer service, see how you’re doing. The Customer Respect Group in Ipswich, Massachusetts can evaluate your website performance through its Customer Respect Index. Could be an eye-opening experience.

Here’s one online customer service message from one of the world’s biggest high-tech companies: “Enter your information in the field below and click to send an email … we’ll use the information you’ve provided to address your inquiry. We can’t promise a personal reply to each email, but will contact you only if we require more information.”

As a customer I’m not sure what I would make of that. Will they contact me ever? I think I would feel like an other.

In his book Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones (2010, John Wiley & Sons), author Joseph Jaffe puts it this way: “Service is the new currency of selling.”

Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc. has received its industry’s highest customer service award for five consecutive years, and has been awarded 11 total in multiple categories since 2004.