Monday 30 April 2007

Keeping your ear to the ground

My experiences with SpinVox pro-actively contacting me got me thinking about customer service in the UGC (user generated content) era.

I often find myself searching the web for references to Esendex, obstensibly for web marketing purposes but really because I'm a little obsessed. Occasionally I'll come across a posting from someone and I'll help them out of let the relevant person in the company know so they can help them.

The leap for me tonight was that this should be someone's job. On a regular basis a member of our customer services team should be browsing the web, searching for issues that we can resolve proactively.

Now fortunately my intial searching didn't come up with any problems. I did come across this forum thread SMS Gateway Dilema which is a fascinating insight into the decision process that someone goes through when signing up for a service like ours. I was on the edge of my seat, we got down to the last three but there is no indication of who they went for. I'll see if our Melbourne office and let you know.

You hear about big companies striving to understand and harness UGC, but actually it's relevant to anyone running a business today. Ignore it at your peril.

No comments: