Disconnect between company and consumer

Last night I had dinner with Brad Gerstner in Boston. We were talking about the idiocy of companies who think that preventing their customers from talking to their employees is a good thing. Brad pointed out the following disconnect:

• Big company marketing departments will often spend 25 bucks or more to get a new customer to talk with.
  
• Big company customer service departments do everything they can to not talk with customers.
  

Anyone notice a disconnect here? I think big company CEOs stupidly run their customer service departments as cost centers, and bonus the customer support executive on how many pennies per call he or she can save. That results in a motivation to layoff Americans and to outsource their jobs overseas and/or with computers. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Instead they should worship their customers, talk with them every opportunity they can, and blow them away with awesome, friendly service.

Which do you think will result in companies learning how to improve their products and services, and getting more customer revenue? Spending a hundred million dollars on market research and advertising, or loving your existing customers? I think the latter.

Posted by GetHuman on Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:00am