People When You Want Them, Technology When You Don't (tm)

Nothing speaks of the role that technology plays in customer service as well as these advertisements from Esurance.  These guys get it!  It's absolutely amazing to me how perfectly they have tapped into the gestalt of our society with their trademarked tag line of "People When You Want Them, Technology When You Don't".

Even the casting in their commercials is spot on. 

Frumpy empathetic loyal middle aged employees delivering the human touch and geeky socially inept twenty somethings designing the computer systems that the twitter blackberry facebook generation would prefer to interact with.  Perfect.

I would make viewing these advertisements mandatory for all customer service organizations and their IT "partners" regardless of the industries that they're in.  The marketing folks over at Esurance portray a pragmatic, if not somewhat uncomfortable and competitive, coexistence between Customer Service Representatives and the technology that is meant to encapsulate their value in a browser.  That's exactly the tension that I see in every company I've spoken to in the past three years.

The message here though is one of coexistence, not one of displacement.  Esurance clearly sees that people who value the human touch should be catered to as should those that don't.  Great synopsis of today's reality!

Notice that none of these commercials even speaks of the products!  No features, benefits, pricing.  Nothing.  Just customer service and customer service your way.

I hope they succeed in the marketplace.  If nothing else they should win some awards for having their finger on the pulse of our society.

Bravo.

Sam

Comments

[Tahsin]

I can't agree with you more. I wonder why this ad seems to have been noticed by people in the service industry. I am putting together a Customer Experience Best Practices deck and this one is in the list!