by Marshall Lager | Apr 7, 2021 | Blog, Guest Post, Sponsored |
This post is a guest piece from Richard Rosen, CEO and founder of Fastcall, a Salesforce CTI vendor and one of my clients. I was talking with Rich about customer focus for focused businesses in a crowded market, and our talk drifted into how limits aren’t a bad thing.Our chat was fun. It was deep. Quotes from the Tao Te Ching and/or a Star Wars prequel may have been thrown around, and I didn’t want to keep it private. To that end, I asked Rich to turn it into something applicable to other business readers. Fastcall is my client and it’s my job to show its strengths, so of course it’s the example in play here. But Rich presents a much-needed perspective whether you’re a user or developer of business applications. I turn things over to him now.Representing your brand as an owner requires a tricky balancing act in an industry where integrity and thought leadership are highly valued. You want to attract new customers and shout the qualities of the product, of course. But that’s making a sales pitch, and nobody wants to read a sales pitch. Then again, integrity and thought leadership mean revenue in the future, when your company (especially a smaller one) needs revenue now.I’ve been holding back from writing about what Fastcall is capable of—that’s what the website and the AppExchange listing are for—but this is an incredible company and there’s plenty for me to brag about. So here’s my plan: I will talk about what we at Fastcall do best, but with as little reference to our products as possible. It’s about why...
by Marshall Lager | Feb 27, 2021 | Blog |
You don’t buy size 12 shoes for size 9 feet. You don’t get a Bugatti Chiron for grocery store runs. You don’t swat flies with field artillery. And you don’t buy more contact center technology than your business can reasonably grow into.The customer service neighborhood of CRM was the wrong side of the tracks for many years. The contact center could only cost the company money (so it was thought), so the responsible strategy was to cut costs to the bone and never spend anything there unless forced to. Asking for more staff or better equipment was like getting the state to renovate the prison library—impossible without somebody of the calibre of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. That attitude was changing by the dawn of the 21st Century. Research proved that better customer service led to better retention, loyalty, and advocacy among customers. These led to a strengthened brand and increased revenue in the long term. New integration technology meant the contact center could save and even generate sales in its own right. The rise of online communities and social networking showed the strength of the motivated and well-connected customer. A shout of praise when a company went the extra mile for a customer in need could be amplified. So could a howl of outrage when one was treated callously, with potentially disastrous results. Spending in the contact center was not only necessary, it was the smart thing to do.The freedom to make decisions based on results rather than thrift was never license to burn money, but it meant that customer service had a stronger voice at the...
