View source for Total Customer Service

Illich's vision of Convivial Tools could also be developed in the realm of customer service. The application of his ideas to commercial relationships implies [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2008_June_30/ai_n27874517 customer empowerment], which is a growing trend in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management Customer Relationship Management] (CRM).

One approach to customer empowerment, advocated notably by [[Doc Searls]], is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_Relationship_Management Vendor Relationship Management] (VRM), which aims to equip customers to be independent leaders rather than captive followers in their relationships with vendors. But VRM focuses on increasing the customer's power with respect to the vendors, rather than looking at how the vendor or service provider relates to the customers.

From the vendor's point of view, commercial constraints always intervene to limit the amount of service one can offer customers. For example, after-sales service is a cost which companies inevitably seek to reduce. Thus telephone assistance is often a paying service, or is delocalized to overseas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_center call centers], or is replaced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IVR Interactive Voice Response] (IVR). How can we imagine a limitless improvement in customer service in the face of real-life economic constraints? We have to go outside of the box of commercial logic with the help of an abstract concept, an ideal, which I call Total Customer Service.

The ideal of unlimited customer service is inherent in the marketing of a Convivial Tool. To design a household appliance that its owner can easily repair, you must also design the whole after-sales cycle: long-term availability of spare parts, usable documentation, online assistance and so on. The better and more complete such a design, the closer one gets to Total Customer Service. But this approach tends to conflict with the commercial interests of the vendor. As the effective life of appliances increases, the sale of new models declines, and as customers become able to repair everything themselves, the need for paying maintenance services disappears. In the long run you might even help the consumer to make their own tool, thus cutting the vendor entirely out the process.

The Convivial Tool or Service seeks to make the user autonomous, while traditional marketing seeks to make the user dependent. One way to resolve this conflict would be to organise the vendor as a consumer's cooperative (see above), in which case the vendor becomes dependent on the consumers. But another approach would be to develop rational marketing strategies based on pushing customer service as far as possible.

To understand Total Customer Service you have to drop economic rationality and aim to save the world, rather than to make a profit. The closer you can get to this concept, the more you will be truly serving the interests of your customers - and of society as a whole. Social vision is the most powerful driver towards true customer service. The weakness of such a vision explains why Sarah Lacy found most of the 2009 TechCrunch start-ups [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/17/memo-to-start-ups-you%E2%80%99re-supposed-to-be-changing-the-world-remember relatively uninteresting]. An exception was [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/citysourced CitySourced], a start-up with a social purpose.

[[Category:Projects]]