Customer Service Principles: Promote Ownership Across Departments

Not every customer inquiry is generated by customer services itself.

According to Bill Price of Driva Solutions, most customer inquiries are spurred by other departments. Whether the issue is caused by marketing or IT doesn’t matter; the process that follows is what counts. In this video, Price explains what ownership of customer service issues entails.

Price helped create a customer support practice at Amazon that continues to be used today. When tending to a customer service issue via email, Price and his team would send a blind copy of any customer service correspondence to the owner of the issue, regardless of which department they were from.

Shortly thereafter, other departments outside of customer service began to implement changes that reduced the number of inquiries and increased clarity on key customer issues. For more on the importance of ownership in customer service, watch the video above from OpenView Labs.