Customer Service Superstars: A Look at How Nonbank Companies Use Technology to Leverage Customer Information
1997; American Bankers Association; Volume: 89; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0194-5947
Autores Tópico(s)Customer Service Quality and Loyalty
ResumoFor all the money we spend on marketing, we know very little about our Robert Thomas, President Nissan Motor Corp. USA Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1996 In this age of anonymous ATM transactions and growing enthusiasm for cyberspace banking, how well do you really know your customers -- other than as impersonal code numbers on a computer printout? Many banks today have seized upon as the single pathway to improved efficiency, increased profitability, and constantly improving levels of customer service. Yet, in the rush to embrace new technologies, banks run the risk of becoming detached from the very customers they want to serve better. That's because technology alone doesn't build customer loyalty. Nor does it guarantee high levels of employee performance. It doesn't automatically permit a bank to maximize the of contacts it has with customers, or build personal relationships with people (things that in days gone by were forged by the personal conversations customers had with loan officers or with a teller). Finally, though banks increasingly are adopting technology that permits remote banking, new research shows many bank customers still want to use traditional bank branches and receive personal service. So, what's a bank to do? The institutions that can figure out the right formula for providing customer care are the ones destined to enjoy the most business success (and the fiercest customer loyalty). To achieve such loyalty, however, will require a more sophisticated and comprehensive knowledge of customers (e.g., their needs, preferences, patterns, and habits) than institutions have ever required before. That's one reason that Coopers & Lybrand decided to conduct a study of customer care best across a wide variety of industries. The study's goals were simple: to identify state-of-the-art customer care practices that companies are using to distinguish themselves from their competition; to understand how companies use technology to enhance customer care, and how customer information is shared inside an organization. The findings are compelling. And many of them have strong relevance for banks today, as they step up to the tasks of building stronger customer loyalty while maximizing the of every contact they have with customers. What's so special? We discovered that leading providers of customer care use their customer service channels (primarily phone contact) not just to resolve customer problems, but as a means to enhance loyalty and satisfaction, build long-term relationships, and improve products and processes. They've also put enabling technologies in place (everything from computer-telephony integration (CTI) to data warehousing, the Internet, and company intranets) to support the efficient flow of information across their organizations on a real-time basis. Using these concepts, each has moved beyond conventional definitions of a customer service department and telephone call center (traditionally reactive in nature) to create what we call a value maximizing inside its organization. This internal information network serves as the heart of a company-wide customer care system. Of the 60 companies we studied, we identified 12 that are high performers in the customer-care arena, and six customer-care superstars. What do these companies do that is so special? First, each has successfully dealt with challenges common to all customer service operations today. Through technology, for example, each has integrated scattered and inconsistent customer databases, and transparently tied together geographically and organizationally dispersed customer operations. Second, they've eliminated the problem of incomplete and dated product and service information. Instead of relying on paper records or isolated computer profiles in customer transactions, they put that information on line, and update it on a continuous, real-time basis. …
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