As a new day dawns?

BusinessWeek in their March 3 issue devotes their cover story and several additional stories inside to customer service rankings. They first did this a year ago and must’ve received a strong response for them to continue the series this year.

Believe me, this is much more important than the Fortune 500 rankings. For too long, customer service has been the dirty end of marketing, those small group of people over there who handle the malcontents. Companies have failed to realize that each reasonable call to a customer service rep presents a failure of marketing. Each call could represent the end of the customer relationship. And companies have failed to address customer service. Even after professing that terribly high cost of bringing in new customers.

Peter Drucker, in 1954, recognized that customer service should not exist if marketing is successful. That’s over 50 years ago. Do the BusinessWeek articles herald new attention to customer service? I hope so; it’s way overdue.

If you look down your nose at customer service, if you wonder why your marketing is moving at the speed of molasses, you should pick up this issue and read the articles. Pay particular attention to the article entitled, “Love the customers who hate you.”