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Cyber Monday Highlights Customer Service Deficiencies and Gains, Subject of BEST FACE FORWARD: Why Companies Must Improve Their Service Interfaces With Customers

Posted on: Monday, 28 November 2005, 09:00 CST

The role of automation in customer service comes into renewed focus beginning "Black Monday" with more than 37% of all buying consumers (52 million people) looking online for the special promotions offered by online retailers (http://www.shop.org/press/05/112105.asp) from their home or office computers. This ushers in the frenetic holiday shopping season during which large credit, banking and retail organizations brace for an onslaught of customers.

Despite widespread awareness of "Black Monday" and significant technology investments to get prepared, most large organizations in these sectors will not be ready, says Jeffrey F. Rayport, co-author of Best Face Forward: Why Companies Must Improve Their Service Interfaces with Customers ((C) 2005 Harvard Business School Press). Written with consulting partner and fellow marketing academic Bernard Jaworski, the book demystifies the business revolution driven by service automation and asserts that the sales game will be won by those retailers, banks and credit houses that understand the customer is in control, and have user-friendly contact infrastructures to support this surge in customer contact and transactions via automated channels through the end of the year.

"Every year, we see an accelerating shift in the center of gravity of holiday sales from brick-and-mortar retailers to online channels, as consumers seek interactions with familiar brands through media or interfaces other than the retail store. Simply put, customers are learning multi-channel shopping behaviors," explains Rayport. "But with this shift comes a potential loss of human contact in managing customer experience and satisfaction for the long term, which makes it imperative to strike the right balance between the human touch and automation."

At Marketspace, where Rayport and his colleagues put the book's principles into practice for Fortune 1000 companies, exhaustive measurements of customer contact points are analyzed in order to structure a mix of reinforcing positive interactions that are enhanced by technology.

"Too often retail activity during the holiday sales season is measured simply by gross revenues or sales per square foot, but that's often an incomplete evaluation of how banks, credit card companies and retailers are nurturing customer relationships," adds Rayport. "In an increasingly competitive economy, customer-facing organizations must be deliberate in how they strike a balance between transactional efficiency and the human touch. At stake is what the business is all about--the meaning of the brand, the pace of business growth and the bottom line."

Best Face Forward is available nationwide at book retailers, collegiate book stores, and online.

About Marketspace (http://www.marketspaceadvisory.com)

Cambridge, MA based Marketspace Advisory helps its clients build stronger customer relationships while supporting efficiency-generating channel migration strategies. The global consultancy is a member of Monitor Group, a global strategic advisory and merchant banking firm.

Notes: Book, JPG of author/cover, sidebar available.

Source: Business Wire

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