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What If They Are Mad As Hell And Not Going To Take It Anymore??
June 14, 2007
Accenture just released the first of three installments of a report entitled “Accenture High Tech Solutions Customer Service and Support,” a comparison of how executives in high-tech companies think their company is doing providing customer service versus how consumers feel they are doing. Allow me to summarize the possible outcomes:
1. The executives think they are doing better than consumers believe to be true.
2. The executives and consumers feel approximately the same.
3. The executives think they are doing worse than consumers believe to be true.
How many of you think it is either number 2 or 3? Those who do, please immediately move to the extreme denial section of the industry.
Its number 1 and while I guessed as much, what I did not foresee is the degree to which this is true. Get this; three-quarters of the executives polled believed their customer satisfaction ratings are above average, with 57 percent saying they would be rated “moderately high” and 17 percent saying theirs’ would be rated “extremely high.” In contrast, 57 percent of consumers said they were somewhat, very or extremely upset with their customer service experience with 78 percent saying they believe their service provider’s customer service is at or below that offered by competition.
So, the execs think they’re doing great while their customers think they’re not. Big time!
Of course, I may be a little over sensitized to this having just spent the better part of two days tech supporting two different problem computers as well as an errant PDA phone, including time on the phone with four different customer service groups, none of which were much help. However that notwithstanding, even before that I knew things were not good and also knew consumers did too.
There are work-arounds to my problems, mostly having to do with simply not using so much disabled, enabling technology: an unthinkable thought for those who sell technology-based products. And sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a study that shows a growing majority of frustrated consumers feel the same way. Maybe it’s like global warming. It might not really be a problem but how much harm can we do trying to make things better? And if it is a problem, well …
If we’re not careful, the industry might end up confronted by a growing number of Howard Beales, the irate TV exec in the 1976 movie “Network.” People who finally say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Bill Matthies is the president of Coyote Insight (www.coyoteinsight.com) and can be reached at (714) 726-2901 or wmatthies@coyoteinsight.com.
Posted by Bill Matthies on June 14, 2007 | Comments (2)
