Millennium Marketing Research®
Tom Schori DBA Millennium Marketing Research®, 808 Ironwood, Normal IL 61761, 309-532-8466

Phone mail: technological boon, or bane, to good customer service?

By Thomas R. Schori, Ph.D., and Michael L. Garee, Principals,  Millennium Marketing Research, 808 E. Ironwood, Normal, IL 61761-5239. 

Maybe the basic idea behind "phone mail" originally was a good one. It purportedly was designed to efficiently route customers and prospects to the person or persons who could best provide answers to their questions or solutions to their problems. This, theoretically at least, would eliminate (or at the very least, limit) recurrent episodes of being placed "on hold" and/or being transferred from one number to another to another before reaching the "right" person or department.

In reality, phone mail seems to have turned in to a multi-headed monster intent on devouring us all and making the whole idea of good customer service laughable.

More than ever before, telephones are a business’s and individual’s life line. If we have a problem or a question about virtually anything, the first thing we often do is reach for the telephone and try to get answers and solutions. In days not too long past, one could actually expect to talk to a "real" person. With the advent of phone mail, that rarely is the case¾ unless one has the patience of Job. More likely, regardless of the company called, one will be "bounced around" some phone mail system more times than a basketball at an NBA game!

It has been our experience, as well as the experience of many (if not most) of our business colleagues, associates and friends, that phone mail has evolved in to one of two configurations (read: irritants): 1.) those who use it, much like an answering machine once was used, to "screen" calls; and 2.) confusing, extremely cumbersome, irritating systems set up by huge companies and designed to be "all things to all people and therefore nothing to anyone." Let us illustrate our point.

How many times have you just hung up the telephone, after (actually!) talking to someone, forgotten something you needed to talk to the other person about, called right back only to encounter their phone mail message?

Or, how many times have you called a company about, say, a question on your bill or order, and encountered an overwhelming barrage of phone mail "options" before actually getting to talk to a "real" person, provided you ever do?

Is this just our opinion, or is it a widely held one? We suspect the latter is true.

Like its predecessor, the telephone answering machine, phone mail could be a useful technological "tool" for both user companies and customers and prospects. But, in its current state, it’s hardly a technological boon. Clearly, it has become a technological bane in every sense of the word to good customer service.

Does all of this mean that we should merely scrap existing phone mail systems and return to the "good old days"? To be sure, some would give a resounding "yes" answer to that question, but most of us know that’s not a very realistic expectation. Instead, why don’t we attempt to fix the current systems?

Here are some steps we would recommend that companies (and individual businesspeople) take to improve their phone mail systems:

  • Medium and large companies (not to even mention smaller companies) should never, never, never use a phone mail system as the initial contact with customers and prospects, if they can avoid it at all (and most can). It would be nearly impossible to come up with a better, more efficient way of making most people feel like "just another number" than by using a phone mail system to "greet" customers and prospects. (We realize most BIG companies receive many, many calls each business day, but we strongly suspect that most of these calls are made directly to people within the companies, not to "main" numbers.)
  • Individuals within a company or organization of any size should make sure that they use a phone mail system as an effective time management tool, not as a system to "hide behind" or "screen" incoming calls. Certainly there are times when each of us needs to have periods of time during the business day that are uninterrupted by phone calls. Activating one’s phone mail allows one to have these periods. However, when it isn’t necessary to have these periods, one should deactivate the system and answer one’s own phone.

Good customer service necessitates having some type of positive, personal interaction between the company (or individual) offering goods and/or services and customers and prospects. There simply isn’t any acceptable alternative to this approach, if a company is really serious about providing good customer service. Certainly, phone mail, in its current configuration, hasn’t proved to be an acceptable alternative.

Strong voices are warning, and all of us in business who are genuinely concerned about providing good service to our customers and prospects certainly should heed the call¾ and not by answering it with a phone mail message!