Need for integrated customer engagement process
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Loading ...I’m a firm beliver in using concrete examples to highlight points and ideas. Here is an example from DELL of the issue, about which I blogged here before, of why a blog by iteself is not an adequate solution for true integrated customer engagement. Dell is certainly trying to work its way around this issue.
By putting up its blog, Dell is inviting a conversation with its customers, which is clearly happening. Naturally, customers with support issues will make comments on the blog and seek resolution there. There needs to be a process of accepting these support requests and processing them effectively that is integrated with the blogging effort. Yes, Dell has support forums on their site. Yes, they also have the means for accepting support requests by email and phone. The problem is that the customer sees the blog as a point of engagement and by posting their issue there, they are expecting resolution; they are not expecting to be told that they need to enter their request for that specific issue elsewhere or that there is some special workflow behind the scenes to address the issue.
The problem now is a broken interface to the company for customer engagement. This approach says, we’re putting up a blog so that we can engage with you, our customers. However, if you want to engage on a support issue, you must engage elsewhere - either on our forums or by email. If you want product information, please go elsewhere.
I firmly believe that customers are going to expect to be able to engage directly with a company on any and all issues, and they are expecting that engagement interface to be easy to use, and the process behind it to be responsive and transparent. Anything less than this will lead the customers to self-organize in their own more-efficient community in order to get the company to respond, or worse to defect to a competitor.
The additional benefits to the company of taking this approach include higher customer satisfaction and better information on the effectiveness of their efforts to engage their customers, since all of the data will reside in a single system instead of across islands of blogs, forums, and other systems.
True customer engagement goes beyond blogging and responding to comments; it needs a holistic approach.
– brian
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