The Importance of Follow-up

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Recently, while reviewing the quality assurance surveys we conduct with our customers, I noticed a common thread in the comments: the importance of following up.

Quality customer service isn’t just a nicety or something you’d find in Charleston; it’s critical to the health of a business.

Here’s a sample:

“You were awesome and this follow-up e-mail speaks volumes of how wonderful your service was.”

And another:

“I was absolutely thrilled when I got an e-mail from [the consultant] the next day with tutorials. I thought that was amazing customer service. Customer service is dead these days. Your company renewed my faith in it.”

It’s standard practice here to send customers reinforcement learning tips and e-mails with topics that are related to the software issue that prompted them to call in the first place. Glass-half-empties may say it’s overkill, or that it’s akin to spamming.

With an attitude like that, no wonder customer service is dead.

In this business — outsourced software support — quality customer service isn’t just a nicety or something you’d find in Charleston; it’s critical to the health of a business. Having a measurement method in place is even more important.

A quote from an InformationWeek report that was published in June says it perfectly: “IT service assurance is something you build in to ensure that your organization’s massive IT investment is doing what business leaders want it to do.”

We couldn’t agree more. It’s a fact that if customers are treated poorly, they will hesitate to call back the next time they have an issue. Instead, they’ll ask a colleague for help and waste the time of two employees, devise clumsy workarounds, or do nothing at all. Morale will suffer too.

But if a customer is given the attention they deserve, even if it’s only for 10 minutes, they will emerge with more knowledge and a better attitude. That, in the end, isn’t a luxury; it’s good business.

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About Jenny Sweeney

Jenny Sweeney is a freelance writer living in the Philly suburbs. Currently, she writes for PC Helps about trends affecting corporate help desks, including cloud computing and the consumerization of IT. Earlier in her career, she wrote about health care, lifestyle trends, and more for the Philadelphia City Paper; and edited city and travel guides for America Online.

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