We live in a world where not valuing your customer service is a severely poor idea; information travels too quickly for your brand to combat bad customer experiences! I’m really frustrated right now with my cell phone and trying to get a seemingly simple problem fixed. I’m quite confident that this could be taken care of effectively if somebody just took the time to care about my issue, but I don’t think I’ll be so lucky. Honestly though, I don’t blame the people on the other end of the line; I feel the problem is quite clearly with a compartmentalized system and poor treatment of customer service representatives.
My phone is having an issue connecting to the internet, it keeps telling me to have an authorized person contact the customer service 1-800 number. I called. I spent six minutes going through an automated system designed to spit me out to an appropriate representative to resolve my issue. The young gentleman informed me that due to system limitations he would not have access to help me and that the issue was something I could manage online myself. I was then transferred to online support and another digital queuing machine only to be spat out to another representative who walked me through the process of creating an online account to fix my own issue. Before the problem was resolved, she assumed that I had done all the tasks required, but since I was calling from my phone I would need to disconnect before I could investigate our success.
Problem remains.
The system makes it impossible for me to find the same rep again. I go through the queue again; after explaining the issue (3rd time) to a new person they again remind me that they can’t fix it and it’s my job to do this online and then I am transferred again. More time… more digital queue. New young man in online support gets a lightly frustrated version of myself and a full explanation of the scenario; his response: “Well I can help you with that!” He then takes a few moments and claims that I should be good to go – again, I can’t check unless I am off the phone. I disconnect after thanking him.
Problem still remains… Mobile internet is not in my future it would seem. Looks like I’ll be switching to Verizon after all.
The moral: Information travels so fast these days – companies like major cellular providers can’t afford to continue this level of customer service. Business owners would be wise to realize that your customer interactions are the fundamental cornerstone of success while your customer service representatives, cashiers, baggers, and phone operators are the front line for your business – pay them well and make them value the experience of working for you.