What if Customer Service ran the Web?

Fri, Nov 2, 2007

Business, Content, Marketing, Technology

What marketing begets... Customer service queue at ORD. Uploaded by jaychi.  When I came of age on the Internet, Gopher servers dominated the land. Usenet was the primary "peer-to-peer" file sharing medium. And Mosaic, the predecessor to Netscape Navigator, had just been introduced. Who knew what the Web would become? It certainly wasn't a foregone conclusion that the Web would become so crassly commercial. (Hey, that's what America Online and Prodigy were for.) But at some point, budget dollars were allotted for the first commercial forays onto the Web. And Marketing got those dollars. Brochureware was born. What if the earliest Web budgets had gone instead to the Customer Service department? What if the Web had been viewed, not as a sales tool, but as an alternative means of supporting customers? If customer service professionals had indeed shaped the early days of the commercial Web, I suspect we would all be discussing and framing our Web projects differently. We might see sites that lead with help functionality and support content, rather than marketing blather. Or at least support content would be on an equal footing with marketing content. How strange it would be to encounter a Web site says "we're more interested in supporting our existing customers than finding new ones." For some businesses (cars, appliances, banking, cellular, cable TV, etc.) this could be a powerful and differentiating marketing message. So, is anyone doing this? Anyone game to try?

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Don Ball - who has written 91 posts on Buy Soma Online Without Prescription.


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