I am an articulate American customer service rep. I have worked in five call-centers. I see very little sympathy and understanding here for the person sitting in a cube taking calls eight hours plus per day. We deal with every temperment and psychology imaginable, and have little, if any, diversity of duties. Often, we find ourselves being the rope in a tug-of-war between customer and company, wanting to do more for the customer but having our hands tied by stict monitoring standards and stringent, often immutable policies and procedures. Any by the way, the first things out of a customer's mouth that we love to hear are loud angry words about how much the automated system sucks or how you feel screwed by "you people" especially since we've probably never spoken to you before and have never done you a disservice in your life! If you were to have a little more patience and understand that it's a great big world with lots of people out there and we know one size does not fit all but there's very little we can do about the bureaucratic way big companies are run, or if you would build up a kind rappport with the rep, I KNOW you'll find it easier to get your problem solved. I'm more likely to go the extra mile for someone that respects me. Someone who is immediately shouting at me I'll want to get off the phone as soon as possible! It's an old addage, but it's true: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Think about it: would you say in public, like in a store, face to face with someone half the things you'll say to a faceless person on the phone? Would you yell as loudly? Reps are people, too!

"...If this were a real problem, we would have heard from thousands of other customers…”

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it took me a while to catch on to that one, mike.
but after i heard it from company after company,
i finally realized it was a clever customer non-service technique they'd been taught...

"i've never heard that before."
"you're the ONLY one who has ever complained."

implying:
you are stepping outside the group...
you should not complain.
if you complain, there is something wrong with YOU... not our product.

my local computer store used to be very helpful.
then... the head office told them not to answer questions...
to refer customers to the manufacturer.

yes, i think customer service is in the terlet.
and i'm sure grateful i bought a 3-year warranty on my computer.

I love this topic- because it is such a hot issue for me right now. I recently watched an interview with Fox Business and the president of a customer serivce company called Mindshare. I think the president of the company made some excellent points as to why customer service is doing down hill (although he did mention they were poor excuses). Pretty interesting - it's worth a look.

I work for ChristianCinema.com, an e-commerce business. and half of our employees are dedicated to customer service. It's a priority of our management.

We believe that poor customer service results from lack of empowerment to the customer service person. We don't give our CSRs scripts, we don't have formulated answers for each question possible. Instead, we educate them on possible outcomes, provide good tools for them to use, and let them go. Within that framework, I find that their first priority has become creating a satisfied, long-life customer.

Perhaps the best black-white comparisson I've found is the difference between my week-long battle with Dell to find a human being to answer a simple question about the fact my computer kept overheating because the fan wasn't working right and my less than one hour phone call with Linksys to fix a minor problem with my wireless network.

They both use call centers overseas (Middle Asian countries -- India subcontinent based on accents) but there is a stark difference in the level of service. One company cares enough to make sure the customer is taken care of. The other feels rerouting complaints through 17 levels of "that's another department sir, please hold" until you hang up is good enough.

As far as American companies go, no tech company I've ever dealt with is more efficient, effective and pleasant to deal with than GoDaddy.

Great topic.

They always say they can't do something but you know they can. I tried to find out from the phone company recently about who called from a Private Number, they said they couldn't help. If they can't help that, then I might as well start making prank calls to tons of people from private Number.

I have a couple of friends working in the customer support field and they kind of told me stories about what happens there.

I think people working on such low end jobs aren't really fond of this and they don't even try to solve the problems they get. Maybe if they were paid better or even payed by the number of cases they solve successfully, things would be a lot better. But since nobody cares about their customer support service anymore...

Andrew, John and Jonathan;

Thanks for your contribution to this discussion.

I think bad service exists everywhere, whether products are cheap or expensive.

If only businesses would understand that service is really a key differentiator, they could keep more of their clients...

Mike

Good Service: Newegg.com and USAA.

Bad Service: Any DMV in any state. Cook County (IL) property tax department (10 months and 40 calls and 3 letters to get a refund)

Fake Service: Any retail employee who checks you out. Do you really want me to have a nice day or was your brain programmed to say it?

Even people who are not in the service industry suck at service. People today just want something for themselves and have no idea or even care about you.

Cheap good service: Amazon.com - much better service than most online applications. Good service is about the entire customer experience - not about having poorly designed systems that require the customer to be held by the hand to get decent service. Amazon does a great job of changing the rules of the game to provide excellent service without requiring an employee personally deliver that service - most of it is automated.

Many small restaurants (often family owned...) with cheap prices provide great service. Google - great search, great email, free. Cruchfield (the product service is incredible) and Cannon (call up and get help on your Cannon product) are completely different than any other organizations I have called to get support - they are actually helpful, just like if you called up your best friend who is an expert on the topic you need help with. Most farmer's markets. Southwest and JetBlue (compared to the other airlines). Trader Joe's. Good Expensive customer service: Ritz Carleton.

I'd love to see an example of cheap stuff that has great customer service.

John - I am fully with you! What is wrong with people these days??? - Mike

I find it very frustrating customer service is so bad - and getting worse in my experience. I do not agree that service is closely correlated with price - yes some thing that cost a lot provide good service but tons of things that cost a lot provide bad service and cheap stuff comes with great service. Bad service is much more correlated with bad management than the price that the customer pays. Customer "service" examples: Customer Hostility from Discover Card - Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog customer service posts.

Jonathan - I paid $2500 for this service.

I would say that in this case, your point does not apply.

However, I agree in general that low cost equals poor service.

Mike

Customer service is directly proportional to the price paid. The higher the price, the more customer service you can obtain.

When people seek the lowest possible price, and then expect to get exceptional customer service, that's just being naive.

Besides "customer service", the only other oxymoron that comes close is the term, "Postal Service".

Jonathan