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Thursday, November 6, 2008
Interactive Frustration
I am well aware of the imperative to save money, especially during the current financial downturn, but would really appreciate some attention to customer service. I would think that when business is slow, companies would pay special attention to differentiating themselves from the competition by being attentive to customers. Apparently that is not the case. I recently received a bill for a purchase made four months ago. When I went on line to pay it, I was not able to access my account due to "Error code 205" - whatever that was. When I tried to contact the company, I became frustrated by endless voice mail options and long hold times. I finally tried to pay on-line one more time only to have the system take my credit card number, but then respond with another error message leaving me to wonder whether my card had been charged or not. Technology needs human support for good customer service.
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5 comments:
When there is a financial downturn, the customer service is the first to go :)
But seriously, most companies are more focussed on getting the product to the marketplace and raising sales rather than on good customer service. There was some research done on how well the customer service representatives of a company pursue customer complaints, and the results were abysmal. The researchers sent an email to the customer service email address, and then followed up by phone about the same case, and the customer service representatives who answered the call had no clue that an email was even sent - because the people who answer the phones are different from the people who read the emails!
I think Good Customer Service equals Good Sales. Personally, I previously used one credit card which i no longer use as I was frustrated with their customer service when i had to call them few times. Customer Service especially is very important when we are trying tell services or products which have little or no differentiations. For example, all banks offer credit cards and almost all of them have similar rewards etc., in that case customer service might be differentiation that makes them better than others. I work in IT and normally talks to 4 to 5 vendors each week about hardware issues and I can clearly see the difference between the service of the companies. This clearly impacts of selection process in future purchases from them
A couple years ago, I left Citibank credit cards after being with them since 1996.
In March, I bought a flight to Mexico on AeroMex airlines. They shut down went through a government forced period of inactivity, basically canceling our September flight without a refund. My friends all charged back on their credit cards and got refunds. I was told that because it was over 45 days since date of purchase... I couldn't do so. Then after explaining, I was told that it was okay, because the flight might qualify as the date of execution. Sent all my info in, then they gave me the first story... saying too much time had elapsed between the flight purchase and the chargeback. Several rounds of arguments ensued. Finally, in november, I talked to a manager that said it was now over 45 days after the flight day!!! I was furious, explaining that I had been arguing with them off and on for two months starting BEFORE the flight date. He was adamant that regardless of past communications, it was now too late.
My first credit card, a decade of loyal service as my primary card, and I got treated like crap over a $200 ticket. Frustrating and sad.
Sometimes the human beings in customer support seem to be about as useful as the computers spitting out numbered error codes. A friend of mine lost her wallet the other week, and I listened to her trying to cancel her credit card. The person on the other end was "helpfully" trying to prompt her to tell him the exact amounts of her previous transactions. No matter how many times she tried to tell him that she couldn't remember her transactions, that she didn't have any receipts with her, that she was not going to be able to pull the numbers from memory, and that she really couldn't help him, he persisted in asking the same questions over and over - because that was all he had been trained to do. No indication that he understood why someone might not remember how much they spent at one store at any given time, or that he could imagine what it feels like to lose a wallet, or that he understood the distress she was currently in. I've been through similar situations with customer service, but I've also had experience with customer service agents who were personable, understanding, and even comforting, so I know that it is possible.
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