I recently read this post on Customer Care in the Era of Big Data and was left with two thoughts.

1. Figuring out the customer’s intent & quickly routing the call is the key. Imagine if there was a company that could anticipate a customer’s issue or create rules around it based on the customer’s account information.  For example, what if you called customer support and were greeted with these options:

• “Hi, and thanks for calling Bob’s Mortgage.  We’ve noticed that this is the fifth call from this phone number in two days; it seems like something might be causing you a problem.  Would you like to speak to a supervisor immediately?”
• “Hi, and thanks for calling Bob’s Mortgage.  We notice that you should have received your bill in the mail within the last few days.  Would you like to speak with the billing department?”

Even if the customer says no, your company could impress them by being up-to-date and proactive with its customer service.   There are also several good lists available of common or behavioral rules to increase customer service. Why not add these principles to automated systems?

2.  Make the customer’s job easier in order to improve the customer service experience. Credit card companies have done a better job with this than some, but they could still stand to flip their prompts.
Instead of asking for a customer’s credit card and then responding by stating, “Your phone number matches your account information,” why not match the customer’s phone number up front and then ask for the last four digits of his/her credit card (or other information that would be known without reaching for a wallet) as ID?  Making life easier for the customer and allowing them to share the experience could be exponentially profitable and organization changing.

As a final thought, I’d like to ask how you, as a reader, could use the information in the Customer Care article and this post. Could you use it to change the way you interact with people?