How Not to Manage a Brand-New Account
How do you make the Customer Experience rewarding for your very best clients? What touches do you add when welcoming a brand-new account? Don’t try this at work:
Dear [Six-Month Old],
Thank you for your business! In order to verify your data, we’ve enclosed an account summary. Review this information [on which age and date of birth are clearly marked] and make corrections if needed on the copy marked for return. Please take a moment to fill out the three forms enclosed for the supplemental coverage you requested. We look forward to serving your needs in the future. Feel free to call on me, your personal representative, if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Completely Impersonal, Unthinking, Auto-Responder
[This is, unfortunately, a real letter to a couple (well, to their son) who had just heavily funded a new account for baby, complete with the data needing review including the account holder’s age, zero.]
You want me to spell it out?
1. Make your auto-responders smart. If you’ve got to use them they have to be able to catch the easy stuff.
2. Don’t use auto-responders for high-ticket goods and services at all. It’s just not cool.
3. Make your “personal” service personal!
Got a horror story of Customer “Relationship” Management that woke you up to improving your own CRM? Share it here!
Grow and be well,
Kelly Erickson
If you enjoyed this post, please Subscribe (it's free!) 
Comment 
Share
Trackback 
18 March 2008, 12:06 am
Autoresponders and phone menus (press 1 for this, 2 for that) are my BIGGEST pet peeves as a customer. I’ve vowed to myself that no matter how important I think I get, I will never use such impersonal methods.
Nice blog you have here.
18 March 2008, 6:57 am
Amy,
Yes! Phone menus are the worst. It’s has gotten so that some companies actually use the fact that a person answers the phone as a selling point, which is a pathetic commentary on everybody else. That should be one of those PODB things that I talked about in my guest post on Capable Blog the other day.
My bank takes a different approach: Do it but don’t say it. I get a human being through Customer Service even at 3 am, with no wait on hold (I think I have to punch in my acct. no. first.) This allows me not to feel manipulated by a cheap ploy, to feel delighted and surprised, and to talk them up whenever asked. They have automated banking, but only if I want it. An important difference.
Commerce, by the way. Love them.
Thanks for the comment!
Regards,
Kelly
18 March 2008, 3:28 pm
I love my bank too, for that very reason. I’ll head over to read that guest post. Sounds interesting.