Customer Contact Reduction: What's Wrong With This Picture?

Questionable Move Of The Week: Wal-Mart has a program called "Customer Contact Reduction," according to The New York Times. If ever there was a self-fulfilling prophecy, that sounds like it. In a blog post today, New York Times reporter Katie Hafner says Wal-Mart is cutting off phone support to customers of its online store, walmart.com. Instead, online customers will be forced to rely on a "self-help tool" on the site. It's part of a program at Wal-Mart called "Customer Contact Reduction."

Sorry to keep repeating that phrase, but it is a mind blower. Customer contact is supposed to be a hallmark of Wal-Mart's retail philosophy. This is the company that hires "greeters" to say hello to customers as they enter its stores. This is the company that uses sophisticated data mining and supply chain technology to anticipate customers' demands.

Online customer support is tricky, I know. Phone support is expensive and e-mail support is impersonal and slow.

But CIOs take note: As my colleague Rob Preston pointed out in a recent column, IT organizations must be obsessed with focusing on customers. That's the lesson to be learned from the highest-raking companies on the InformationWeek 500 list of most innovative users of information technology.

So a program called "Customer Contact Reduction" could be a very bad idea -- it might generate the kind of reduction in customer contact that translates into a reduction in customers. You know what they say: Be careful what you wish for.