The Dying Art of Customer Service
I don’t really want to bitch wildly, but there has been an undercurrent I’ve noticed around a lot of sites and services lately that has caused me no end of frustration, and I want to take some time to discuss my recent experiences with:
Customer service.
Those fifteen letters might as well be a four letter word, the way they make people feel lately. Yeah I know we’ve been in a recession; my wallet has felt it as much as everyone else’s. But so many companies have decided that the the fastest and easiest way to “trim the fat” is to cut back on their customer support services.
Companies now outsource their tech support to people on the phone with scripts in foreign countries, or use online bulletin board services that are woefully understaffed by people who are not knowledgeable about the questions they are supposed to be answering, or they reject the problem and claim it’s their customers’ problem to solve.
How many of you have encountered this? Are you like me and do you feel that this is neither service nor support?
No Internets For Me
A couple of weeks ago, I was in the middle of writing for Techi, and my internet connection died suddenly and inexplicably. I’ve been managing networks for upwards of fifteen years, so I know how to check wires and connections and everything to make sure that the problem is not on my end. I did so, and the problem wasn’t.
So, I called Comcast Xfinity’s customer support and ended up talking to some belligerent twerp who kept telling me that everything was fine on their end and that I needed to go and connect a laptop to the cable modem directly. I explained to him repeatedly that my connection was working fine 20 minutes previously and the only thing that had changed was them. He kept insisting that it was my job to troubleshoot their technical difficulties.
At this point, I became exasperated with the fellow, and told him to stop arguing with me. I explained that I paid for my internet service for a reason: not only for the connectivity, but for SERVICE. When there is a problem with my service, I expect as a part of that service, which I am paying them for, that someone should fix it, not argue with me about it. After more discussion, he finally agreed to send out a tech to investigate the problem, although it would be, he firmly stated, at my cost.
After waiting for several hours for the tech to show up, since I depend on the internet to get my work done, I went back down to the basement and disconnected and reconnected everything once again, twiddled with the various routers and modems, and, Lo and Behold! Everything started working again, no thanks to Comcast Xfinity’s tech support. So I called back and canceled the support call, and got back to work.
Making My Claim More Difficult
Another recent issue I encountered was with the once-relevant blog search engine, Technorati. I maintain this blog as part of my professional site, and recently moved it to a slightly different address within my site. The blog has been “claimed” with Technorati for many years, but since I changed the URL, I had to “re-claim” my URL.
At first, my claim was actually rejected, for reasons that have yet to make sense. So, I took my complaint to their support forum. But, because most of the staff of Technorati has either left or been laid off, they have now outsourced all their tech support to a bulletin board service run by GetSatisfaction.
As far as I could tell, there was all of one staff member from Technorati in there answering questions and providing support, and it took TWELVE days and seven different posts before my issue was addressed and my claim was allowed; something that shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.
Dinner Blog Network
Then there’s the issue I ran into with the dinner blog: I heard about a community of food blogs called Foodbuzz that provides an advertising network and community for promoting other food-related blogs. I submitted my blog to them, and after a lengthy delay, their community manager responded that the blog didn’t meet their standards. He went on to describe what their standards were, and they exactly described my blog. So I wrote back for clarification, and after exchanging three emails, was no closer to understanding why the site was rejected.
I contacted his boss, and she was able to clarify that, in fact, the site was a worthy candidate for their network, and they would be happy to have us join. She promised to get a custom contract to me right away so that we could do business together. Almost a week later, after repeated phony excuses, I was sent a boilerplate Word document with my name and site inserted in a couple places, and terms that were so ridiculous (like control of my site design, advertising exclusivity and my having to confirm their sources of traffic), I laughed when reading them.
Good Service = Happy Customers
I’m really not a difficult guy. But I do expect a few basic things: when you provide a service or a product, you back it up. Support means exactly that. I am not paying you so I can troubleshoot your product for you. That’s your job. You’re there to help me, your customer/client, unless you want me to choose someone else to do business with— a choice I’m all too happy to make.
People are picky about what products and services they choose, and customer service is one of the most important factors people seek when they choose a product. Why do you think Apple and Honda and Amazon have so many customers? It’s not just because of their design, but also because they stand behind their products and give their customers the sort of service they deserve and expect.
