Do you have Customer Service department or a Company Service department?

We are all firmly entrenched in the service economy at this point. It’s become such a common part of our everyday lives our monthly fees can simply drift into the background (a great article here, on what that might mean for us all). In the end, however, we shouldn’t forget we’re paying for that service and with that payment should come an expectation of actual service.  Having run a service providers, we dealt with customer requests daily that have nothing to do with how to use our product, but rather how to help them manage their accounts. Upgrades, downgrades, missed payments, stolen credit cards… there are a lot of reasons why a simple monthly transaction might not work for any one customer in any one month.

A Curious Case Study

As a company who uses many of these services as well, we are also one of these very customers who may have questions or need for assistance from time to time. In a recent interaction with one of our own vendors, we found ourselves quickly disappointed by the service (or lack thereof) we were provided. I realize this is not a unique story, nor is the irony in the fact that the very service they provide is customer service itself lost on any of us. In seeking assistance, however, we were told they are bound by their MSA and even at one point, “we are strict on this rule because we are publicly traded and do get audited,” and therefore had no way of accommodating a specific request we made.

Let’s simply assume everything they told us is true and their customer service staff had no means of assisting us. The timing and amount we’re talking about are trivial. The long-term value of our potential account and impact to their goodwill with us, however, might not be. Does their staff ever think about this? Are they even asked to?

One Approach

We, of course, had policies in place that dictate how we manage accounts. Subscribers must agree to terms of service, they are asked to confirm they understand they will be billed a specific amount monthly; they have complete control to update or cancel their accounts on their own at any time… blah blah blah. What I’m saying is there is nothing unique in how we onboard customers. What we do believe in, however, is empowering our support staff to resolve customer issues within the bounds of common sense and decency.

• You forgot you had an account and haven’t logged in for months… We’ll figure it out.
• Money’s tight and you’d like to skip a payment… Ok, we’ll push out your renewal.
• Your card was stolen and you’re not going to have a new one in time to update by the next payment… that’s ok, we can freeze any collection attempt.

I wouldn’t, for a moment, suggest we got it perfect every time. What we did talk about, however, is that we are in the service industry and with that comes a responsibility to actually serve our customer. I’ve yet to come across a subscription service where the financial consideration of assisting any one customer at any one point isn’t exponentially less than losing that customer for good. But hey, I don’t know… Zendesk is a pretty big company, maybe I’m missing something.

How does your customer service staff define actual service? And who do you ask them to serve?