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Are there any drawbacks to customer-to-customer support?
Tweeting or posting a question on Facebook often gets customers a quicker resolution than if they were to dial into a customer service support line, but I can imagine that there's some drawbacks to this type of support. What are they?
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4 Answers
There are definitely drawbacks to customer to customer support.
1. They may mislead the customer causing more harm than good and possibly making it harder or impossible for the customer to fix their problem.
2. If this is a mechanical issue (or hardware) the customer, following someone else's advice might even void a valid warrenty.
3. If your product has serious defects, customers experiencing the problem will find out from others how bad it is and you may get more refund requests. (this may happen without customer to customer support).
4. You lose the contact with the customer to upsell or cross sell other products or services they might need.
5. You lose the direct contact with the customer, losing some brand awareness and good will.
6. You may lose the opportunity to learn of special things the customer is interested in, which could be new features in your product or a new product completely. This comes in the form of the question..can your product do ....this..where ...this.. is the new feature or product needed.
They are some positives
1. You may find out some solutions you didn't know about
2. Customers may get their responses faster.
3. Happy customers may upsell or cross sell your other products for you (positive word of mouth)
4. If you monitor what customers are saying in the public you may expose new opportunities for products, features or services that you had not considered and that they might not have told you directly.
I am sure others will add a few more to these lists.
A: "Hey thanks B for that answer, I really appreciate it. By the way, what kind of plan do they have you on?... What! They are charging me 1.5x for the same thing!"
Interesting question and I think what is interesting about the question is how it is framed from the organisation's point of view, rather than the customer's. The implication being that customer-to-customer support is somehow less valid or trustworthy without the intervention of the organisation. If the organisation is not involved, not only does the organisation lose out, but so too does the customer. It is an interesting philosophical question.
I think also the question is slightly unclear between the drawbacks of customer to customer suppport and the use of Twitter or Facebook as a customer service channel.
Great question, Caty.
I think Adele's response addresses a lot of the drawbacks, and Guy also brings up an important point about customer-to-customer support:
A savvy support organization would be involved, as more than a passive listener.
The most effective customer-to-customer support environments that I've seen are those which occur in forums that are facilitated and managed by the company/support organization.
But in order to generate full and open participation by the customer base, the organization must be fully transparent. In other words, it cannot screen out comments it may consider negative, nor can it use the forum as a place to promote its own (cross-sell/up-sell, etc.) interests. Customers figure that stuff out pretty quickly, and may call the organization out on it, before going elsewhere.
So, while customer-to-customer support can have drawbacks, it can also be very effective in reducing support costs, and fostering an active customer community.
One final point:
If an organization offers a great product and service at a reasonable price, and manages its customer relationships well, it needn't manage the customer forums - its cusotmers will do it for them!!! Customer confidence and word of mouth will be so postive, that the vocal corps of promoters would manage the detractors.
Thanks Caty,
Jim Watson
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