Employees Frist, Customers Second

This title may seem awkward for a blog which is supposed to be discussing about customer relationship management, and the old adage "the customer is king". Nevertheless, I picked this title from an article I recently read from French Newspaper "Le Nouvel Economiste". This title refers to call centers' human resources policy, and how it can impact customer satisfaction.

Call centers had the culture of effectiveness based on data: number of people reached, how long the call lasts, how good the customer data base is filled in by the employee... But with this approach, employee's job is repetitive, and is not fun. This is the reason why customers have a bad experience. Moreover, call centers have high employee turnover. Turnover has a high cost for a company, needing to hire, and educate the new employees.

Let's not forget that customers are human beings, and as human beings, they like to be in relation with other of their peers. That means that whatever is robotized is a risk of lowering customer experience. I have always considered that the first contact customers or shopper have with a brand is the human face of a salesperson, or in that case, a call center employee. And therefore, they should be the most exited people about your brands and products. They should therefore be happy. 

This is what Zappos has accomplished.

he 10 Zappos Core Values:

1. Deliver Wow through Service
2. Be Passionate and Determined
3. Embrace and Drive Change
4. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
5. Do More with Less
6. Pursue Growth and Learning
7. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness
8. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
9. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded
10. Be Humble

Zappos has a culture of delivering high customer service, which sets them apart from competition.

Hence, as a customer centric company, you should pay a close attention to the human resources policy, the management of employees.

Happy employees lead to happy customers. Employees happiness first, customers'one second.

Let Your Customers Speak Out

"Always Remember: If customer don't have effective way to voice complaint, they just quit doing biz w/ the co."
This sentence is a quote from @tedcoine I found out on Twitter. I believe it is a very interesting one in term of customer relationship management. Indeed, social media have changed the way companies interract with customers.


They can not anylonger avoid listening to angry customers, and they must now deal with it. This is the job of community managers, a new trade which is blossoming.


It is not a natural behavior for a company to let its customers to speak out its complaints and issues. A company sells products, and is seeking for efficiency, which implies standard processes in order to save time and costs.


But ultimately, customer satisfaction is the key factor which will bring success or not to one company.


A lot of companies have looked for ways to silence unhappy customers. They believed that by doing so, they will be able to keep the happy ones happy, and that eventually, unhappy ones would come back.


But it is no longer possible. And this is the reason why they must deal with it now.




This is the reason why it is important to have a strong feedback management system. A one which is able to deal with the large number of media one customer may use to get in contact with the company:

• A call center if it is via telephone.
• A customer service if it is by mail or email
• A community manager if it is by a social media
• A sales person if it is in a store
• An after sales service if it is because of a broken product.

Those media are expensive to manage, and to keep active. But they are vital, because it will minimize the lost of clientele in case of problems.


Also, something very important to think about is how to manage and leverage the large amount of information you may get from all those different sources.


The infromation will come from various ways, but it is important to have a tool which will allow the analyse of all the dysfunction customers may experience.

Will Twitter Replace Call Centers?

At the early stage of the rise of Twitter, a lot of expert as myself have seen the great potential of Twitter to deal with after sales services. It works somehow like a mix between a FAQ (frequently asked questions) and an email inbox.

Some companies like Best Buy have already adopted the system with success. Also, we have seen how good Air France has used this tool to deal with the Icelandish volcano crisis to propose new flights to its Twitter followers.

During the 90s and the 2000s, the call center industry has skyrocketed. Thanks to new routing technologies, setting up a call center to deal with customer disatisfaction was a very effective way. Also, it was a great way to enhance customer relationship management for direct sales company, and the new coming E commerce actors.

But as every technology, it is challenged when a new one appear. And therefore, I was wondering if it was possible to switch a call center activity to a Twitter feed.

Now let's start with what is sure: in a near future, all companies will need a Twitter account to deal with customers/prospects questions.

The only problem for companies is that it will once again complexify the way to deal CRM, and customer relationship manager will have a lot of questions... In fact, call centers will cost more and more money, and it will certainly lose its competitive advantage upon owning a salesforce or a retail chain. But human voice is one of the most important medium for human interractions. And therefore, if you want to keep a strong customer relationship, it is important not to avoid this very important factor.

Customers are fed up to deal with machines, and human would rather speak to an actual person instead of dealing with a machine.

Here is my conclusion:

• Call centers will still exist, and it will actually be a strength for businesses which owns some. Nevertheless, their activity will probably slow down.
• Twitter will for sure take some of the flow of questions of customers. Not only Twitter, probably Facebook will too.

What is for sure, it is that both will be reunite with the arrival of the mobile area: You will use your smartphone either to find on Twitter your response, or to call a call center if you haven't find what you were looking for.

What do you think about it?

Some Thoughts About Dell's Sales With Twitter

You must remember how a Dell has grown while it announced it sold for $6.5 million thanks to Twitter the past year. Indeed, it was the evidence that Twitter could become a viable distribution channel, and it was worth developping a community management force to leverage this potential. Dell set 35 Twitter channels like this one, which speaks to 1.5 million followers (which is a $4.1 revenue per users). I have read this article relating this fact, and raising skepticism about it.

As with anything vaguely interesting or popular that grabs the public imagination, it's never long before Big Business is eyeing the prize and desperately trying to turn a buck. Twitter spam - should that be 'twam', or maybe 'spitter'? - is already clogging up the Internet and every corporation with a PR department worth its salt is tripping over itself to jump on the tweeting bandwagon.

A recent report on the übercapitalist website Bloomberg crows about PC box builder Dell clocking up $6.5 million worth of sales directly attributable to corporate tweets sent to the 1.5 million followers of its 35 channels. Even though that's a tiny fraction of the company's $61 billion in revenue last year, it's still a worrying development for Twitter and its waning street credibility.

The simple fact of the matter is that, once the corporate world gets its claws into the kind of social phenomenon that Twitter has rapidly become, those in the know will rapidly move onto the next new thing, one which has yet to be mired in intrusive advertising and corporate nagging.

Could Dell have signed the death knell for Twitter? Only time will tell, but we'll certainly be looking elsewhere for our celebrity-sourced chit-chat fix sooner rather than later.

So there is two main things about this article I would like to comment.

First, about the fact that $6.5 millions is worthless compared to the large $61 million sales Dell has accomplished in overall.There is no doubt about that. Now Twitter is young, and Dell's participation in it is even more recent. Twitter world is brand new, and brands need to create their own territory and use of the tool. This is 0.1%. But beyond figures, what has been shown is that Twitter can become a retail channel. Foremost, what I would like to see is how profitable this channel could be. Indeed, is it costly? I don't think it requires a large bandwidth and a lot of server capacity like a ecommerce website would, since it is hosted by Twitter. I'd like to know:

• The staff that takes care of these Twitter account. 35 people? I don't think so, but I'd like to know how qualify and how numerous the staff is.
• I believe they did not create new CRM/ sales software, and might use the very same one they use for their call center.

I believe the conversion rates might be high. But if you are part of this project and you read this blog, I'd love your experience to be shared.

The other part wants to say that now that companies are using Twitter, it could be referred as "Twitter spamming", and could be the edge of the death of Twitter. This is totally the opposite. Once brand and companies will be convinced of the interest of this social media, then Twitter will be able to monetize their service, become profitable, and then secure the future of Twitter. I believe actually this should be the emergency for Twitter. With other companies that have failed to monetize their large audience and the end of the web 2.0 hype, they must find partners and people who are willing to pay to use Twitter's potential. If not, there is no way Twitter will never be profitable. I believe actually that one of the weakness of Twitter and other web 2.0 services has been to believe that when they'll reach the critical mass, they'll be able to make money, whatever happens, without even thinking about how to incorporate advertising or for example premium service to their offer.

As I have said, I am not really the most optimistic about Twitter as a company by itself, because they have failed many times to deliver its service in a dramatical way, but also because they have failed to show monetization potential yet.

Anyways, Dell's contribution on Twitter is huge, and I give them a lot of respect for that.