Can large companies handle CRM?

One of the (many) nice things about going on holiday is that it enables you to look back at the year, put things in perspective, take a longer view.

The trend that caught my eye over the past two months (no, I haven’t been on holiday that long, just haven’t blogged that long) is people blogging about poor customer service from big companies.

Now, this is a hobby horse of mine, I too blogged about the subject a few months ago, but it seems to be a common complaint amongst other bloggers as well. Phil Wainewright blogged about mobile broadband monopolist O2 and Vodafone, Paul Greenberg about United Airlines, Duane Jackson (although more positively) about BT & Virgin Broadband.

Now, I can see two trends here. One is bloggers using their blog to let off steam at their failing suppliers. I’m not sure that this is what blogs are for, but it seems to be happening. The other trend is either that large companies are getting worse at customer relations, or consumers are getting less tolerant. My feeling is that both are happening: large companies are getting larger and larger customer bases; and their customer service is being squeezed by price competition and the increased cost of labour.

As I mentioned on Phil Wainwright’s blog in reply to his post, I’m not sure what I would do to fix these problems if I was CEO of O2 or Vodafone: how can you deliver consistent service to hundreds of thousands of customers, each only paying a small monthly fee? As I struggled with the oxymoronical customer service departments of British Gas, Egg, and Sainsburies Bank over the last two months, I keep being told that “We have a lot of customers, you know” and “99.9% are happy”. Yes, but 99.9% don’t call and that stills leaves a thousand of so customers who aren’t. None of the large companies I have dealt with have that oft-touted “360 degree view of the customer”; there’s no way their telesales team will read your email of yesterday before hassling you, they have their process and can’t cope with anybody who steps outside it.

Maybe that’s what I’d do if was CEO of a large company: put in a decent CRM system that customer service personnel would read before making a call. Can it be that hard?