Confidence in what numbers can do, when processed at near light speed by computers, has put product and process at center stage and customers in the wings. Much of the human touch has been drained from the customer experience, making customers feel increasingly marginalized as human beings.
Take automated telephone systems, for example. Their ubiquity is a product of the numbers mind-set that rules Corporate America: replacing live telephone receptionists with automated systems saves payroll dollars. So, today’s customers phoning in to anything other than mom-and-pop companies are usually greeted by a recorded litany of buttons to push. Often, the button the customer pushes drags her into another frustrating round of menu listings. When connection is finally made to a line that the caller thinks may be the right one, her human dignity is often further assaulted by a shameless recorded voice: "We apologize for the wait. Your call is important to us. Thank you for your patience."
People programming automated telephone systems fail to realize how hollow those words are and how they discourage customer loyalty. A recording telling customers how much the company values them while they have to wait to talk to a live human being is disingenuous.
Authenticity is not optional if you want to build strong relationships with customers who belong to the New Customer Majority. A recorded voice saying "your call is important to us" is not authentic. If my call is important to you, why make me listen to a recording telling me what buttons to push, then after I push one, make me sit through another recording after which maybe, just maybe, I’ll end up on the right line where I wait minute after minute for a live human voice to say "My name is Jill. How may I help you?" Jill doesn’t give a damn about me because you, her employer, don’t.
Too many bean counters view the telephone as a necessary evil rather than as a moneymaking communications tool that can be used to serve customers, save customers, build brand loyalty, and grow sales. Keepers of the corporate coin compare the costs of staff time on the phone with customers against the costs of an automated telephone answering system and, voilà, it’s cheaper to buy and operate a machine that answers phones automatically. Apparently, these numbers-driven folk would like nothing better than a marketplace where all human contact with customers could be eliminated.
Give yourself a treat. Call 800-435-9792. You will be greeted in a friendly though businesslike manner by another human being. The person who answers the phone works for Southwest Airlines, the famously cost-conscious budget airline. It is the only major airline where actual people answer customers’ incoming calls. Notably, Southwest is also the only major airline currently making a profit. Further, over its 30-year history investors never stopped loving it. In fact, Southwest’s stock symbol appropriately is LUV. Tough-talking, bourbon-swilling, chain-smoking Southwest cofounder Herb Kelleher chose LUV as his company’s stock symbol. Doesn’t that say something important? Doesn’t it suggest that Kelleher is having a ball and, like Virgin Atlantic Airlines cut-up CEO Richard Branson, wants his workers and customers to be part of the ball?
Ranking seventh in size in the United States, Southwest’s market cap is bigger than the six larger airlines combined. At the time of this writing, the market cap of the world’s largest airline, American, was $576 million. Southwest’s market cap on the same day was $10.7 billion. Several months before it filed bankruptcy, the market cap of the second largest U.S. airline, United, flying over 900 planes, was $90 million—less than the price of a single Boeing 747.