In recent months Aner and I have reviewed several companies operating in the web 2.0 space. From mobile applications like Shozu to web services such as Zoho, We have been candid, not to say blunt. From rave reviews to cynical wrath, we told it like we saw it.

I have been surprised by the overwhelming positive (and consistent) feedback to our reviews. We are not the only bloggers in town, we are not the only customers on the block and yet they all take the time to write us back. Moreover, each time a senior manager within the organization does it personally. This definitely superseded my conservative expectations. Have we all not been victimized by the “thanks for your feedback, we are working on it” laconic response from the invisible PR guy? It got me thinking about one of the more important evolutions Web 2.0 is responsible for - the one of customer service and personal attention.

Direct, personal, fast, courteous, professional feedback as a customer service 101 practice? By top level executives? This is a new phenomenon that big multinationals still haven’t managed to grasp. And when they do make an attempt they usually kill it with the red tape. They hire a VP who builds departments that hire training consultants who help set up additional departments with 10-15 service reps, who in the end become the face to the external world. Sometimes organizations just outsource it all together. They justify it by defining customer service as “a competitive angle, too important, off core specialty that needs to be taken care by professionals”, but in reality their main goal is to get it out of their immediate attention and reduce overall cost. Customer service is the source of so many white lies, just like HR is (“our people are our real asset” is my favorite, but that’s for a different post).

So who is more sophisticated? A company that outsources customer service or one where the CEO, CTO etc. take a few hours of their time on a weekly basis and answer a few hundred emails, write feedback to posts etc.? Who knows their customers better?, who knows their product better?, who knows what the real issues are? The answer is obvious. Business intelligence and customer feedback come from the trenches and when you loose sight of them and turn into a paper or people pusher, then you loose your edge.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying a CEO responsible for 1,500 or 10,000 people would make best use of his/her time by answering 200 emails a week but how about 30? How about reviewing 100?. How about reading them personally and not having them summarized? There is no excuse, no matter how big the company is, to lose the direct sight of the customers, partners and in our case, blogsphere colleagues.

I believe the drift of customer service away from the core of the executives’ daily routine might be the related to the trivial, yet very ‘human’, misconception that customer service is “uncool”. That a CEO, CTO, CMO don’t need to deal with it because its beneath them, not fitting of their managerial status, three piece suite or six and sometimes seven figure pay check. “Why should I do something a $10/hour rep in the Phillipines or India can do??”. That is pure BS.

Web 2.0 brings a positive wind of change. I don’t care about bubble talk, but the new kids on the block know how to treat their customers and neighbors. I hope we all refrain from ‘growing out of it’. In fact, that may be the very key to success and growth. This is the key , knocking the ‘old fools’ off their lazy boy chairs while mumbling “How come they have such incredible retention rates….I’ll wait for the Monday report from the head of customer service to over to go over some data….”
Special thanks for the following executives who know their customers and gave me inspiration to write this post. Luckily, they are not alone, there are many others…:

Sridhar Vembu – Zoho’s CEO
John Crow – Director of Maketing, ThinkFree
Gibu Thomas – Sharpcast’s Founder and CEO
Andy Tiller – Shozu’s CTO

and Signal vs. Noise from 37Signals