Michael Jackson, general manager, Ireland, at Tech Data, believes good customer service “is simple enough really -it’s about putting the customer first; it’s about listening to and responding to an individual customer’s needs, as quickly and as well as you can”.
That’s not to say that automation doesn’t play a part. Tech Data has some “very advanced online systems and automated processes” that customers make use of to check availability, get pricing, delivery details and more. “Being able to do that at any time and without getting involved in explaining all the intricacies of a project is very useful,” Jackson observes.
“If you don’t handle somebody’s issue properly, you’ve lost those sales forever” – Michael Conway, Renaissance
But there will be times when resellers need specific help selecting a product or responding to a particular customer request, or where they need input from an expert. “We can offer both, through the people we have on the ground here in Ireland and the specialist Tech Data divisions in the UK,” he claims. “Being able to call on experts in enterprise networking and storage, in audiovisual, mobile technologies and all the other technology categories we provide is very useful.”
Conway says automation can work, but only up to a point. “It’s like anything, if you’re ordering a box of matches or booking a hotel room, you could be happy with automated processes. But if you require any element of input or support, then you need to speak to people.” Buying a printer can be done online and all that’s required from the distributor are “really really good automated processes. If it’s automated, the information provided is adequate and it’s easy to do business with, then that’s brilliant customer service. But if somebody’s looking for something with certain nuances, I don’t think those sort of portals fit the bill. They’re so limited if you go off the basic vanilla stuff.”
Human input
Jonathan Long, head of operations at Pure Telecom, believes that “keeping a strong human element to customer service is very important – every business and every customer is different, and it’s impossible to have a ‘one size fits all’ automated system to cater for this”. Pure Telecom’s strategy is to “humanise” its service so each call is answered by a person, “and every business customer has a named account manager who can resolve their query efficiently and take accountability until it is resolved”.
And while “automation has a part to play”, he says it should act as “a support structure” to the customer care team. “Once we diagnose a specific query, we use backend automated systems to alert us to updates but, crucially, human intervention kicks in again to give a detailed report back to the customer and ensure nothing is lost in translation.”
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