Is it customer service or customer engagement?

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Dell Technical Support?”

“Uh, no, it’s your son in law”

“Oh, well my computer is really slow can you help me?”

“Sure, but it’s your son in law”

“Ok, I need service on my computer, it’s slow. Is this technical support?”

It goes on and I determine that my mother in law’s computer only has 256mb. Apparently playing Majong and Facebooking requires the capacity of a Cray Supercomputer. I like this computer place called TigerDirect when I need parts and components. I’ve seen their mix grow from raw, unboxed parts to the latest in Televisions, cell phones and the best price in town for ram. Yesterday must have been the best customer experience. So much so that I want to call it customer engagement.

This place is a zoo in the middle of the day. Ram is kept behind a counter in a glass cabinet and requires an associate to get you what you need. I wait patiently but I’m acknowledged. That is such a big thing for customer service, uh, I mean customer engagement. If makes you feel really good when you are acknowledged. Almost like you are appreciated. My turn comes and Luciano comes over and asks me how I am and what I’m looking for today. I tell him I need ram for a Dell Dimension 4600 series and he punches it in and finds out exactly what style. He walks over the cabinet and pulls out 3 items. “DDR PC2700. Here is 3 options”. He shows me the best, the middle and the cheap. It’s my mother in law so I go for the middle. He then tells me that if there is a compatibility issue, I can pull out the old 256 module and use the 1 gb module alone.

Luciano then walks me over to the cash and waits in line with me. He asks me if I need anything else? I say “Ya, tell me about those net book computers. Can you do Power Point presentations on it and surf etc?” So we chat about net books for a few minutes. He then hands me off to the cashier and she asks me if I’ve found everything I was looking for today. She (as did Luciano) mentions the return policy on ram (there is none but it is fully guaranteed). She rings me up and I pay. As she’s bagging it, she offers me a catalogue and says “Have a great day and we’ll see you again”.  Even the person checking my order at the exit wished me well.

They weren’t just serving me, they were engaging me. Offering options and advice, asking open ended questions, making sure the sale went through and being friendly through the whole transaction amounted to a superior customer engagement experience that will lead me to come back and get that net book. The key factor here is that everyone was knowledgeable about their respective jobs. Luciano was the memory expert. The cashier knew her customer service policies inside and out. And, I don’t want to jump to conclusions here, they both believed in their brand.

I guess that’s why it’s a mad house there in the middle of the day. BTW, mother in law is very happy with her new, faster computer.