Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Will Customer Service Suffer?

I have a question to pose to my readers today: Will customer service at many companies suffer as we emerge from this recession? Now, why would I ask this question... Many firms have reported strong earnings in recent months, surpassing investor expectations on numerous occasions. These firms have cut costs dramatically during the recession, in large part due to employee reductions. Now they are experiencing a surge in profits as revenues begin to grow again while costs remain tightly controlled. One wonders, though, whether revenue growth may strain some firms' abilities to serve customers well given how much they pared their workforces over the past two years. In other words, what if revenue growth bounces back quickly in the coming months and surpasses the firms' abilities to staff up appropriately to keep pace with the new sales? I believe some firms will feel this strain if the pace of economic recovery quickens significantly in the near future.

1 comment:

McKibbinUSA said...

Customer service has never been a profit-center for large companies, and so I honestly doubt that companies will reinvest in what did not work that well to begin with. The truth is that technology is replacing customer service incrementally, and so there is not much of a future in what was never any good anyway. Watch out for large companies as they move forward with global mergers and acquisitions in response to the economic disaster that is hopefully in abatement. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.