They become customer advocates and push development of products and services in the right direction. Customers in turn develop relationships or at least a comfort level that would not be achieved otherwise. One important advantage of person to person communication is the filtering process. People can filter well both while listening and presenting. While a company's pool of information presented on the Web can be comprehensive and its search engines helpful, clients are often lead down a number of erroneous paths.
Customer satisfaction can suffer if inappropriate products are purchased.
At DELL, a popular mail order computer source, Internet sales are growing but overall customer satisfaction may be suffering. According to a seasoned sales associate, this may be due to the salesperson's ability to better tailor PCs to customers' needs and interests. They can recommend less expensive ways to achieve the same performance. Professional copywriters are more likely to put a puffed up spin on a product's benefits. In fact, research shows that acknowledgment of product flaws and limitations can actually improve customer perception of a product.