Customer service and the Internet Grapevine

Richard Winfield - editor I have recently been preparing some material on Customer Care. Increasingly organisations are recognising the importance of customer care to differentiate their product or service.

Two issues reinforce the importance of customer service and customer care in the Internet age.

We have been having a series of problems with customer service from the British bank, Abbey. The staff have been very friendly and may well have been on customer service courses. However, in each case they have been failed by a lack of systems and been unable to deal with simple - and surely common - occurences such as death and change of address. We have so far discovered two web sites specifically established to pass on examples of bad customer experiences at Abbey.

The grapevine these days is supercharged!

The other lesson is the opposite. Ron Paul was a republican candidate in the USA presidential primaries. He managed to raise more than $10,000,000 in small donations using the Internet. How did he do this? The power of social marketing! Social media, the Internet and a viral moevement amongst social site aware surfers who cared enough about his message to spread it across the global network of social sites.

So, remember, if you are the source of a story - good or bad - you might be very surprised at how quickly it can pass around the world.

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I have just read a fantastic book by Gregory David Roberts. It is a novel but is based on his own expereinces of the slums and mafia of Mumbai at the the time of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. It is a long and gripping book of more than 900 pages. It is not just a thriller, but includes some philosophy and and theories of life.

I am pleased to use Roberts' description of Occam's Razor as the basis for this week's Coaching Notes.

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I recently attended a presentation by Yeow Poon of People and Organisation, a local but international organisation transformation consultancy. In his final reflection Yeow included some comments based on the famous quote of Rene Descartes, "Cogito, ergo sum". I thought you would enjoy them

I think, therefore I am.

I believe, therefore I will be.

I am mindful, therefore I am aware.

I study, therefore I know.

I do, therefore I become.

I learn, therefore I am no longer the same.

Richard Winfield is founder of Brefi Group.

An international facilitator, he coaches and

facilitates directors and boards in transition:

helping them to make progress by

bringing structure and clarity

to their thinking.