Press "3" For Your Fish Finder

Thank you for calling ABC Company.

Your call is VERY important to us.

In order to serve you better, please press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for French, 4 for German, 5 for Cantonese, 6 for Pig Latin and 7 for New York tawk, 8 for southern drawl. If you do not understand the question, please press 9.

How many times have you experienced the audio fortress set up as a barrier to quality customer care?
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In an effort to reduce staff and operate more efficiently, many organizations forget about one thing. The one thing that keeps their doors open, their lights on, pays their salaries and ironically enough, pays for their expensive automated phone system...the CUSTOMER.

Some organizations have concluded they can lower costs by outsourcing their call center to a third world country where English is, or might as well be, a second language. A number have since retracted that decision.

When you tell the customer service rep or technical support specialist that you didn't understand them, they figure you'll somehow comprehend them better if they just say the same thing twice as fast. Add to that frustration, the sound of keyboard entry on the other end of the line after you get past the "morse code" that means they are going to type in your question to a web data base of FAQ's and try to answer you. HELP!

It's no wonder that we've finished the call more frustrated then before we made the call.

So as the race to get "scale", remove non-value added activities, and reduce operating costs continues, organizations that might actually believe they are improving customer service are creating a needs gap.

So what does all this mean?

These needs gaps created by organizations that have left the customer behind, are great places to cast your net. They may have left behind a blue ocean (as described in The Blue Ocean Strategy, Chen and Maughborne).

Let me paint the picture. Let's say you notice a trend in the competition or current supplier community for a product or service. Automated customer service is a great example. You personally experience the associated pain. Let that frustration service as the origin of an idea to capitalize on ... a place to cast your net. Let it serve a place that you can create value for customers sick and tired of voice mail hell.

Think about other "Press 3" frustrations that could get you to the live person THEY seemed to have forgotten about.