

Customer service isn't a department - jackaltman
http://jackealtman.com/customer-service-isnt-a-department

======
shortsightedsid
The problem with customer service being 'separate' is that it quickly loses
value. In that sense, OP is correct but one needs to take it further. Once you
support a customer, you are supposed to help her for more than just 2 days!
You need to take it to conclusion regardless of who you are, even if it means
that it takes days or weeks. The best part of that - you build a relationship
with that person and if its a B2B thing then you could even add them on
LinkedIn, right? ;-) Heck, you could even do some Marketing/Sales for your
company and ask them for a testimonial about how good the customer service
was! There are even tools for such things - Customer Rivet
([http://www.customer-rivet.com](http://www.customer-rivet.com)), or
Testimonial Monkey
([http://www.testimonialmonkey.com](http://www.testimonialmonkey.com)) etc..
End of the day, what I learnt (the hard way) is that you need to support
customers not just because its company policy but because it helps you out
personally.

------
TheCapn
I don't know if I feel the author fleshed out this conclusion enough to get
his point across firmly. Sitting where I am right now I want to disagree only
because a lot of his thoughts are hastily concluded and don't reflect a
reality of customer service.

Already posted here user `shortsightedsid` talks about how 2 days really isn't
very long to conduct "Good" customer service if you are interested in building
customer relationships. A big difference between a nameless call center and
personal connections is recognizing a name. Saying to Joey that you spoke with
Samantha last time isn't necessarily helpful if they don't even work in the
same department. Joey relies on Samantha documenting the interaction well
enough that he can take off and act like he's already up to speed on the
matters. Departments have their distinct advantages to the piece-by-piece
solution he describes.

And even now, in my small company I'm required to field customer calls when
they're technical in nature. I have my primary clients that I know quite well,
I've met many of them face to face and shaken their hands but when I've got
deadlines or critical issues hanging over my head I shudder each time my line
rings to field another call.

The end he talks about Chess grandmasters and the dedication it takes to do it
well. The analogy to me came off wrong where he advocates a jack-of-all-trades
method of dealing with customer service yet insists the overall corporation
should maintain a master level expertise. How does that occur without
establishing a concrete set of protocols and dare I say, departments?

The idea is sound, it probably works in certain cases but overall I think the
issue of customer service has been done better in the department model than
the diversified one.

~~~
jackaltman
Non-CS people doing CS will give a worse experience in a single specific case,
but will improve the overall customer experience in the long run.

I'm not arguing that companies should get rid of departments, just that they
should take CS seriously. I think having all members of the team talk to
customers is the best way to give the whole company an orientation toward
customer service. 37signals, Stripe, and others do this too, not just Amazon.

------
midas007
Attitudinal topics are just some of the cross-cutting concerns, like customer
service and security, that often become Tragedy of the Commons if not taken
seriously. In large organizations, there does need to be a "Chief _____
Officer" for relevant concerns that has support, authority and wisdom to teach
their domain and helps other departments. Not just a title, paperwork, busy
work or a mandatory meeting.

------
jds375
In addition, entrepreneurs should not dismiss the value of user-testing as
part of customer service. So often a startup will have an idea for a
product/service and work tirelessly to implement their vision of it without
ever taking it out and testing it with users at each step in development. I've
learned this lesson myself and it is surprising how often developers
misunderstand their users.

------
wpietri
Yes!

There's one Lean Manufacturing guy who talks about plant safety. He says that
years ago they got a great reduction in accidents by eliminating the Safety
Officer position. He explanation was basically that if just one person is
responsible for something, that means everybody else feels like they can
ignore it. By eliminating the position, everybody became responsible.

------
MysticFear
This is the main reason why I love Dogecoin. It is the great customer service
that can be found. I do not know another cryptocurrency that offers this
business function.

------
forgotAgain
Self serving drivel. No function is contained within a single department.

------
ommunist
No, it is not. It should be an app.

~~~
shortsightedsid
An app is just a tool. You still need people to work with customers.

~~~
ommunist
That is exactly where the problem is. Ever tried to find human customer
service at Skype.com?

~~~
shortsightedsid
I guess my perspective is more from handling customers when they use our
software development kits. We developed software devkits and our customers
built embedded applications using silicon and software. In such a case, there
is no way to get away from supporting customers because that's what we did.

