Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Until the recession, customers haven't been as important as they are now. And because customer service is the touchpoint where most companies gain or lose customers--and knowing that there's not one company that can lose even one customer--I see some sunshine on the horizon. Customer service has suffered for a long time from what I call the Rodney Dangerfield Affect (RDA) (meaning, they just don't get respect), but its time has come. That's a silver lining if I ever saw one.

This perfect storm of the economy, customer disdain, and the drive to retain customers, prompted my colleague Chip Gliedman and me to think about how we can help companies innovate customer service. Addressing pain points and solutions like first contact resolution, chat, SaaS, and unified agent desktops, are important focus areas. Building a business case is another. As are reducing operational costs and enhancing revenue. I've addressed these issues in my research How to Win Funding for Your Customer Service Project, which is based on Forrester's Total Economic Impact Methodology. We'll also be sharing details of our observations and recommendations at the upcoming Forrester's IT Forum.

The first step to innovating customer service, however, is to evaluate your "current state." One way to do so is to use Forrester's Customer Service Innovation Framework, an online survey all the stakeholders on your team can take, so you can compare your current state to best practices. The survey output is designed to help gain organizational alignment (that's always tough to do!), create a phased-approach to determine priorities, and prove to management that change is necessary.

Let me know on Twitter if you are attending Forrester's IT Forum -- @drnatalie -- and if you can't attend, follow the event via Twitter: @forrester

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Natalie Petouhoff, Ph.D., is Senior Analyst, Customer Service, Social Media, and Customer Experience for Forrester Research