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Customer service can the single most powerful weapon a brand has to create loyalty, evangelism and a positive reputation within their community. Today, every single customer has the power to share their experiences with people that could possibly be future customers.
A customer is increasingly likely to share their experience when it is either really good OR really bad. If you’re doing just enough to help them, without taking the initiative to really send them away floating, that’s fine, but don’t expect them to go sharing their story.
Now what if you’re a free service. You take in no revenues, whatsoever. Should you engage in customer service?
Customer service should ALWAYS be a concern of every business, brand, tool, whatever…whether or not your service is free.
You certainly don’t want users to have a bad customer service experience. For whatever reason, you’re offering your service free of charge, but I’m going to assume you still want it to be successful. You’d like to have a lot of users, and create value for those users, no?
The extent of how much you can commit, or invest money into, is obviously going to be limited if you’re a free service. The last thing you want is for your user’s voices to go unheard, or worst, heard and responded to poorly.
If you do nothing though, you’re not only missing an opportunity to create loyalty and evangelism, but you also risk building a bad reputation within your community, or target audience. Free or not, if you want to be successful, customer service is absolutely necessary.
I know some people disagree with me… If you have any thoughts, agree or disagree, please share…
"When you succeed by Free, you are going to die by Free."
Mark Cuban has some interesting comments on Free.
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/07/05/the-freemium-company-lifecycle-challe...
He supports the observation of a senior technology director I worked for at McDonnell Douglas a couple of decades ago:
"If you aren't making money with your business, all you've got is an expensive hobby."
I mean, there a number of reasons that someone might choose to offer a service for free. The one that inspired my post actually does make money but all of it goes to charity.
The point isn't whether or not you should be trying to make money with your service, but rather whether or not customer service should still be engaged if you aren't making money.
David,
I was trying, but 140 characters certainly isn't enough to discuss this.
First of all, I tried to make the point in a tweet to you that if you're a free service then you don't have customers. You suggest then that they are users - I think that works (semantically), but I think it then adds another dimension to the point you're trying to make above.
In your post, you never really define what customer service is. I think it is different for everyone and every situation. But, I also think you're maybe trying to group together two different elements: Service and Interaction.
We expect a positive interaction with all services - whether they are free or we have to pay for them. We can do this because, in order to use the service, we need to WANT to. Unless if the proprieters are trying to keep humans out, the UI better be good.
Our expectation of SERVICE is relative though. We pay a premium, as customers, for good service. I expect and will receive better customer service from Zappos than from Amazon. Holiday Inn won't stack up to the Four Seasons. Vegas Casinos are better than Michigan Casinos. Nordstrom will essentially wait on you, while Macy's will ring up your sale. I could go on and on. We pay more for good service - we get pleasure from positive human interaction and we are willing to pay that premium.
I think you bring up a good point; however, I just can't get my head wrapped around the concept that free services should provide the same outstanding customer service that paid services provide. It isn't impossible (as humans control the service part), it just isn't realistic.
I'd like to know what free services you're referring to in your post. I'm trying to brainstorm some, and all I can come up with are online sites. Twitter, Facebook, Hulu. All they're doing is providing a platform for a community though. It is the users shaping their own use and service. We appreciate good user interaction with those sites (that's what keeps us coming back), but I don't think we do or should expect customer service from those sites.
Maybe some concrete, real-world examples of free services will help me? I don't disagree with your concept, but I think it is a lot more complex than you're making it out to be. Thanks for the discussion.
Thanks for the comment Andy.
It is absolutely more complex than my post. Of course it is impossible for me to go into every possible scenario but ultimately the answer will be based on the scenario.
For the sake of argument, yes I think Twitter should provide customer service, regardless of whether or not they are making money. Of course as you mention, there is an extent to how much customer service one should reasonably expect. I think that twitter should be responding to complaints, especially since the greater majority of them probably take place on their own platform. If a user has a problem and they tweet about it or send them an email, they should respond with a respectful and helpful response. Of course all within reason.
My point is that companies should be concerned about the experience that their users/customers/whatever have with their brand. To ignore an issue that would hurt your audience's perception of your value is foolish.
Hey David,
I agree with you!
Since my role here at Brazen Careerist is essentially bringing our free community the best possible support I can, I can tell you that we're definitely concerned with customer support.
Granted, we're not the largest social network out there, but I know for a fact that other social networks are concerns with this. I just found out yesterday that LinkedIn has community evangelists. And a couple months ago I talked to a girl at Ning who is part of a comprehensive team of community managers.
You're right, customer support matters. The thing is, it looks a little different and it hasn't yet evolved to the mature stages of HelpDesk personnel ... God forbid the day that it does.
-RP
"When you succeed by Free, you are going to die by Free."
Exactly .. I'll take a little example, Markus Frind from plentyoffish .. he made a free dating site and paying his employees withe ads revenue .. he tried now for one year to make a paid dating site, but every time he goes back and thinks to ameliorate his own site and amelirate user experience ..
According to me, you should not be a paid service if you are providing information online , I stick with the foundations of this www if you can see what I'm trying to say ..
Back to the main subject, I think that people can understand if you are a free service that you aren't able to provide excellent customer services and I think that they will accept the situation because it was their choice from the beginning ..
You're looking at customer service as an unwanted responsibility...you should be looking at it as an opportunity.
It's not that they have to engage in customer service, it's that they should.
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