Wal-Mart.com Says: Click, don’t Call!

According to the New York Times:

“As part of what Wal-Mart is calling its “Customer Contact Reduction” program, by next week, Walmart.com, the company’s online arm, will no longer give customers a toll-free phone number to call–or any phone number, for that matter–if they have a question.

Instead, they will have to rely solely on the Wal-Mart Web site as their guide to the solution for whatever problem they might have, whether it is a question about a credit card charge or the status of an online order.”

Now, they can move their support centers anywhere in the world without getting middle America upset.. because emails and help files have no accent. Mr. Sam Walton might frown on this. But Sam Walton knew a good deal when he saw it.

Some CRM solutions that are entirely web-based can save a company $20-25 per customer interaction. And if these people are already using the Wal-Mart website to order items, this is not a huge leap.

Postscript:

Seth Godin focuses instead on a system where efficiency (i.e. customer buy or repeat buy rate) is the reward offered to successful operators.

I’d focus on building a system that measures [sales rate before call] vs. [sales rate after call]. If the sales rate goes up, give the call center person a raise. It’s that simple.

I’m trying to envision how one could set this up for customer service organizations.  Sales call centers, yes, but service oriented businesses?  Now we’re thinking long-tail.  We’re talking relationships. You would need some rather sophisticated operators to think in terms of the long tail, but if the philosophy was drilled in from day one, you’d get service centers that acted a lot like brand welcoming committees, who are there to improve your brand BY WAY OF fixing problems.  THAT sounds good.

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One Response to “Wal-Mart.com Says: Click, don’t Call!”

1. Nov
   8
   2007
   At 4:14 pm Dave Nofmeister Says:

   I’m suprised that they’ve actually had phone numbers on their website for so long. A lot of companies are making the same move.

   It’s interesting how they come up with the costs for contact. I work at a computer helpdesk for a company, where we only support the company employees themselves, not the “end” customers. We’ve always been told how it costs about $25 for a call to come in, and the average analyst may take about 5 calls an hour. The funny thing is, almost none of the analysts make $18 an hour, but somehow we cost the company $125 an hour per person to do this.

   I realize their are other costs involved, but if employees typically are among the biggest of expense (hence, moving business offshore), where do they get this value from?

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