Seth in his post titled "Unusual?" wants American Express to provide better service, but will he pay for it? You see for all companies that deliver service after the sale it comes down to money, plain and simple. How can the cost of service be kept at an absolute minimum while keeping the customers minimally happy. Yes I said minimally happy. All the talk you hear about companies wanting loyal customers is not true on the service after the sale piece. American Express wants you to be loyal to their product not loyal to their company because of the great service they offer for your credit card. In Seth's case American Express feels that getting back to folks in a few days helps to keep down costs since slower email days will balance out busier email days. But of course you get those pesky customers complaining about how long it takes. You placate some of them by "setting the customers expectation". Right again, they are not interested in meeting the customers expectation for service after the sale they want to set your expectation.
To his credit Seth believes there must be a better way. And there is, it is called offshore outsourcing. You see companies can get 4+ people in India for the cost of 1 person in the states to do this kind of work. But what is even better is to get only 2 in India and allow extended response times whenever 2 is not enough. Trust me some VP somewhere has gotten a major bonus and job promotion because they cut the cost of help desk support in half for the company.
And all of this is driven by the desire to cut costs because consumers want everything at a lower cost. In fact the entire reason for companies replacing American workers where ever possible with cheaper foreign labor is to keep the costs down for American consumers. Of course the fact that the average household income is going down because replacement jobs don't pay as much is not their concern.
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