Connected?

I recently saw an article about the worst customer service departments; I used three of the top ten and my cell provider was listed as the top offender.

I know that everyone has had a poor customer service experience at some point; I have had my share of late – that very cell provider, an online clothier and an airline all in the last six months. Outside of the huge amount of hold time, my greatest complaint had to do with lack of integration. In each instance, the “send an email” feature never connected with my profile, I never got a response and my email (the first contact) couldn’t be accessed by the CSR when I called to follow up. This is three different companies/ industries!

All that in mind, I was pleasantly surprised when I made a call at lunch today to enroll in our employee stock plan – I tried to enroll online, but kept getting an error. So I naturally waited two days, and reluctantly called into the customer service department today expecting a hassle. I was completely wrong, the CSR addressed me by name (I had entered my SSN) and knew that I had tried to enroll online Tuesday evening. He helped with my elections and even provided information that wasn’t given in my original notice.

So what makes this experience so different? CONNECTIVITY – knowing that your customers/ prospects have logged in, attempted to access your product or service and then helping them correct the issue.

So I ask, at what point in the bell curve does the cost/ time of updating/ integrating your multiple channels offset the attrition of customer dissatisfaction?