Echoes of things that you said

I’m not referring to the Police song ‘Voices inside my head’…although there is definitely a play on concept here…It looks like big business is listening to the millions of voices out there who have had enough with poor standards in customer service at the phone support level.

A while back, I wrote a blog about Paul English, and his consumer movement ‘Get Human’, a new website that provides secret phone numbers and cheat codes to reach a human operator when calling a company for customer service.

Paul English, in his keynote address at the recent SpeechTEK conference in NY, announced that his group, along with Microsoft, Nuance, and other industry leaders / giants are now working together to create a set of standards designed to eliminate poor caller experiences with automated phone systems.

"Consumers have put up with bad customer service over the phone for too long, and this new initiative will put some sanity back into how companies interact with their customers…” English said.

According to Opinion Research Corp. nearly seven out of 10 consumers say they are less likely to do business with a company after a bad call center experience.

It’s great to see two things happening here:

1) Standards are being developed to measure, monitor and index customer satisfaction and experience. Naturally this speaks volumes to what we at iPerceptions are doing in the web space.

2) Voice of the customer is becoming harder and harder to ignore. If you don’t ensure a positive customer experience, your brand is most definitely going to suffer. Just ask the now over 475 companies in the Get Human database. And if they aren’t convinced on the importance of listening to the voice of the customer, you could always ask the millions of people who put them there.