With the Rise of Social Media, Will the Call Center Disappear Like the 1970's Porn Mustache?

Perhaps this is not the type of thing one should say in public but… sometimes I find myself reminiscing about the 1970s.  It was a wonderful, glorious bygone era when men (well, at least real men) sported large, unashamed, unwieldy mustaches. Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Frank Zappa. Heck, even John Waters grew a ‘stache (or tried to anyway). And I bet a lot of businesses today also wish they could return to the simplicity of the 1970’s – a time when “Customer Service” simply meant having a brick-and-mortar help desk during standard business hours. If a customer had a question or complaint, they either penned you a polite postal letter, or they drove down to your business and stood patiently in line, waiting for their chance to courteously explain their problem.

Today things couldn’t be more different. Customers don’t stand in line. And they certainly don’t write courteous complaint letters. Rather, customers today use strong, angry, colorful words to trash your business, your products, and your brand. And they do it publicly online – in front of all their friends, family, co-workers, and followers. To make it worse, their comments and reviews are saved, indexed, and served up for eternity to anyone who does an Internet search for your business, products, or services. Forever!

Yes, Social Media has changed everything. Today’s customers are more tech-savvy today than ever before. And it’s not just teenagers and college students who have embraced Social Media. Parents, grandparents, and retirees are all blogging, tweeting, texting, and posting online reviews – often from their iPhone, iPad or other mobile device. The days of customers calling your contact center and patiently waiting on hold for half an hour are gone. Today’s customers demand to be able to reach your customer-service department instantly, and via whatever communication channel they find most convenient – whether it be telephone, email, text message, Web chat, Twitter, Facebook, or online community.

And not only do customers expect to be able to reach you online, twenty-four hours a day, via whatever communication channel or device they prefer. But arguably, customer expectations regarding customer-service response times have changed as well – particularly with regards to Social Media. If a customer posts something directly on your Facebook page or tweets directly at your company’s Twitter handle, the customer expects an immediate response. We’re not talking about a response sometime in the next 3 days, or even 3 hours. No, they expect a response within 15 minutes or less. And if you can’t handle that? Well, your customers will likely find someone else who can.

So, where does that leave us? Luckily, it’s not all bad news. Despite the disproportionate media attention and hype, Social Media-based customer service (while continually increasing) still represents only a fraction of the total customer-service interactions for most companies. The majority of customer interactions are still taking place via the contact center, particularly via telephone. And realistically this will still continue for quite some years. Granted, usage of Social Media, Web self-service, and online community-based support is steadily increasing. And yes, older antiquated communication channels like postal letter and fax are declining (while smoke signals, semaphores, telegrams and carrier pigeons seem to have completely faded as modes of business communication). However, the telephone is still the predominant communication tool.

While newer communication channels and platforms such as SMS, Web chat, Twitter, Facebook and online communities are growing fast and catching up, customers today still turn to the telephone when it matters most. For example, if a customer is not able to quickly find an answer to their question or solution to their problem in an online community or Web self-service site, the customer might switch over to a Web text chat session. But if things start getting complicated and confusing, the customer will likely pick up the phone and call the contact center (or in some case, request a call via a Call Me feature on the Web site). When it comes down to it, the hardest issues and questions often require talking to a real person in complete sentences (rather than trying to decipher esoteric 140 character text blocks).

No my friends, the good old fashioned call center is not going away. It will always be around. In many ways the call center is similar to the mighty mustache. Both had their glory days in the 1970s. Yet both refuse to go away or vanish completely. Organizations like the American Mustache Institute and Mustaches for Kids are dedicated to keeping the tradition of the mustache alive. Even young hipsters have started growing mustaches (along with beards, sideburns, and other facial hair) adding it to the list of mandatory hipster artifacts that include skinny jeans, scarves, and American Apparel brand clothing.

So raise your glass, here’s to call centers and mustaches. They might seem old fashioned, antiquated, superfluous, and even downright silly. But they’re here to stay. Embrace them my friends!

This post is also available at TheSocialCustomer.com.

Comments

[Shania Simpsons]

I believe call centers still have the mustaches to compete with Social-Media in the future. It will depend on whether they can keep up with the changes because, at the preset, nothing is changing between the two. Actually, call centers are trending, but so is social media.

[rc helicopter]

Impressive blog! -Arron

[Sonia Roody]

I like the witty metaphor about the 1970's port mustache. Hehe. Yeah, social media has the capacity to banish call centers. But it's too early to tell, as call centers are coming up with solutions to catch up with the vicious cycles in IT and customer service.

[Belstaff Jacket UK]

Very, very nicely done!