Devoted to customer service and the principles of exceptional customer services

Evan Schuman of StorefrontBacktalk talks about how 1800mattress.com is sending online chat transcripts with customers to the physical stores so that customers don't have to repeat information to the salespeople in the store.  Seems like a pretty seamless process, but as Shuman points out, the implementation of this type of system from an IT perspective is one of the biggest hurdles that companies face. 

In my opinion, I don't think merging channels of communication isn't so much a technical issue as it is a cost issue.  There's no doubt in my mind that it can be done - if we can send a man to the moon, we can do anything.  I think the real issue here is:  Do companies want to spend the money and time to do it?

This reminds me of something I went through the other day when I called AT&T to talk about my wireless account. I called customer service to discuss an issue, but then I had to be transferred to "Billing" to discuss a refund...waited another 20 minutes to get through to Billing because of the hold time, plus the customer service rep wanted to repeat the information to the billing rep so I didn't have to. I appreciated the effort, but I still ended up having to explain the situation again anyways. After that conversation I asked a question and was told that it was a "customer service" issue and had to be transferred back to the customer service department. After all was said and done I spent about 45 minutes on that call which could have been solved in 10-15 minutes if I didn't have to be transferred back and forth.

If only companies who have these separate departments could just merge "customer service" and "billing" together.  Most of the time people call customer service regarding a billing issue anyway - especially in the wireless industry.  

But again, it would take money and time to take on a project like this...