The other side of service delivery
by Fred on 20/04/07 at 12:23 am
2 comments
I was sitting having coffee with my ole mate Marc at Seattle last week when we got to chatting about South Africa and service delivery. We discussed the stuff that had been posted on Ideate (iBurst, FNB) and he made some pertinent comments which I’ll share with you. I won’t go into too much detail, but here are the main points:
1. Call centres are a big problem. For a call centre to be truly effective, it should have technically proficient individuals on the other end of the line. Much of the frustrations of call-centres come about from the support-person not knowing what they’re talking about.
2. Call centres with good people result in a successful company. A good example is Hetzner – where you will inevitably speak to someone who knows what’s going on. Hetzner is flying as a result of a solid service structure.
3. South Africa is growing. Call centres like ours, characterised by poor communication and failure to be effective, are a by-product of a transitionary 2nd world economy.
4. Problems = Opportunities ‘The biggest problems result in the biggest opportunities’ – Michael Gerber, author of the E-myth said this. So, stop complaining about SA’s service iniquities and provide a service that’s better than the other guy. This is a path to wealth.
5. Service delivery is all about good systems. Some examples: strategically plan to return emails at a certain time; ‘Buffer your response’ i.e. promise to phone back within 24 hrs and then phone within 12.
Marc is a smart guy. He’s a pretty good businessman (he also happens to be a qualified clinical psychologist) who is using South Africa’s poor service delivery and lack of systems to make a mint.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
NoTiTo
Oct 29th, 2007
Hey,
I am glad to see there are other that think Hetzner offers great service. They are setting a good example and South African companies should learn from them.
And yes I’ve had a few hicups with Hetzner but overall they are not okay, they are actually great!!
I mean the techies sound like techies, no umm errmm ahemm but on point. What more could you want?
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