Different Strokes Suit Different Folks
I’ve been in
communication with Apple over an issue I have with what they call “Two-Factor Authentication”. The issue itself isn’t important here, what
interests me more is how Apple choose to communicate with customers.
In this case, Apple communicate by phone (the idea
presumably being that they solve your issue for you immediately). This is great – provided that (a) there’s a
phone number for your region (and (b) that you’re happy to spend a long time on
the phone…
Not all of us are like that or actually need our issue
sorted right away. We’re happy to send
an email describing the problem and waiting for the recipient to sort it
out. I think it’s great that Apple want
to sort us out personally, and I’m sure that in at least 95% of cases, they
can. In my case, there wasn’t a simple
fix, and I was asked to stay on the line whilst they referred to a supervisor. I had already been on the phone for 24
minutes at this stage and asked if they could just email me a response once
they had spoken to the supervisor but was told that they couldn’t escalate if I
wasn’t on the phone…
I had already spent 24 minutes of my time on the phone and now
needed to stay on? They had all the
information they needed, so why was it necessary to keep me “hanging on the
telephone”? If they’d offered to call me
back, that would have been fine, but I saw no reason to wait. My view was that I’d done my duty by
reporting the problem, it was up to Apple to fix it and I wasn’t in a tearing
hurry, so they could take their time to work out a quality solution. Surely this is the stuff dreams are made
of? A cooperative customer saying, “take
your (not my) time to find a solution and get back to me when you have”?
We have a choice of communication method when dealing with
problems. In order of speed, I’d rank
them as:
- Face to face meeting
- Phone call
- Email/company website feedback form
- Letter sent through post
The last two (email and letter) are for where time isn’t
critical (especially letter) and are what are known as “asynchronous
communication” (i.e. when you write the email/letter, it isn't read at the same
time by the recipient). Face to face
meetings are fine if the person can meet straight away and you're in their
office/store or work place, but most of us will use a phone call for highly
urgent matters and email/company website feedback form for the rest.
The advantage of having at least one “time sensitive” and
one not-so time sensitive method of communication is that it helps to
prioritise. If we get a phone call, it
would be fair to assume the matter’s urgent (to the other party, at
least). This doesn’t mean that we ignore an email or
letter – both are important and should be handled professionally, but a phone
calls’ “here and now”.
In short, if I want to report a problem and have it looked
at over time and am not too worried about how quickly the other side gets back
to me, I’ll use email. If it’s urgent, I
use the phone.
It’s great to see businesses insist on only using the phone
but why not give your customers the
choice? It could save time and money.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling, Teamwork
posted by William Martin @ 08:46
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