(play that nostalgic American music, softly)
I have no trouble with anyone who wants to make money. As a matter fact, I kind of like having money. Yet, if you’re a business, there should be a balance between making money and customer satisfaction. Currently, the balance is out of whack. From time to time, on this blog, I have talked about the fact that customer service is dead. It isn’t any one company, it’s almost everyone. In the mid-1990s, I switched from Gateway computers to Dell because of service. Once Dell gained market share, customer service became an afterthought. I’ve had problems with AT&T, GMAC, American Express and probably a few others.
Hey, let’s be honest. The calculations have already been done. If we scale back our customer service and ship our call centers to India, how many customers will we lose and tick off? Do we make more money compared to the amount of money we lose for ticking off customers? This is the big business calculus. Big Business is saying that it is okay to piss off some number of customers. That’s okay because they’ll will make more money in the long run.
The following is a tale that I’m sure you and I have lived through way too often.
From WaPo:
This column was written entirely while on hold with eBay customer service.
John: My name is John. What is the nature of your problem?
Me: The nature of my problem is that I’ve been on hold for one hour and 11 minutes, listening to staticky Beethoven. Every 30 seconds a woman’s voice has told me the call was important to her and then a man’s voice has told me that someone will be with me “in just a moment.” So eBay has been serially lying to me four times a minute for a total of 284 lies. It was in the middle of the 285th lie when you picked up and told me your name was John, which I am thinking, from your voice, is a 286th lie.
John: My name is really John.
Me: Where are you, John?
John: San Jose.
Me: I don’t think so.
John: We are located in San Jose.
Me: You are not. Admit it.
John: Okay. We are an offshore center. Calls are routed through San Jose.
Me: Two hundred eighty-six!
John: How may I help you?
Me: You can admit your name is not John.
John: My name is John.
Me: It is not. Is it? Is it?
John:
Me: Two hundred eighty-seven!
“John“: What is the nature of your problem?
Me: My original problem now seems so trivial, compared with the length of my wait that it no longer matters to me. If that is eBay’s business plan, it is brilliant! But now I’m just so angry, I am going be totally unhinged. I am going to ask you, for the record, if eBay embraces the Big Lie as an homage to Joseph Goebbels, or is your policy just similar to, but independent of, actual Nazi ideology?
“John”: We’ve been trying to accommodate members as fast as we can. …
Me: By subjecting your customers to this sort of wait, is eBay actually trying to exasperate people into cerebrovascular accidents, otherwise known as strokes?
“John”:
Me: Okay, I will now tell you my little problem. (I do.)
“John”: Let me look into this.
Me: Whatever you do, don’t put me on … (Seventeen minutes of staticky Beethoven, and 67 more lies.) (more…)
0 Responses
Erri, the marketplace will always determine the success or failure of customer service. Don’t think that you can regulate or mandate it. It’s not for you or anyone else to determine what that “balance” should be between customer service and profits. The marketplace is extremely efficient at managing that without the input of any one entity or person.
Why was customer service such a big deal for more than 40 years in this country?
I don’t think that we should regulate or mandate it. The marketplace is NOT efficient. That’s the problem. It really isn’t. Microsoft is an excellent example of how the big get bigger and not more efficient. Windows ME. Windows Vista. both were terrible operating systems but because Microsoft controls more than 80% of the market they are able to survive terrible software. What does Office 2010 give you that Office 2007 or even 2003 didn’t give you? Nothing. I can do the same example with Cisco and with major Banks and with many industries. Hell, GM put out crappy cars for over 30 years before there was problems in their cash flow. The market’s aren’t efficient. That’s the problem.
I appreciate your thoughts.
Have you never had poor service from a ‘small’ business? I certainly have.
So, it has really nothing to do with whether a business is ‘big business’ or ‘small business’, does it?
It’s a human problem. Humans are imperfect. They get lazy. They make mistakes. They don’t always get things right (oh I know you do, but the rest of us mortals don’t).
Has any ‘customer’ of your ER ever complained about how things were handled there? I’m sure they probably have. Was it because you weren’t doing your best, or is it the case sometimes that we as customers have expectations that don’t fit reality?
btw if you still want to insist that the problem is only (or mostly) with ‘big’ business, then tell us where the line is drawn. EXACTLY how BIG must a business be before it turns into an evil ‘big business’?
As I’ve said before, I trust business very little, but I trust government even less.
Why?
Because once you hand a job over to the government, you’ve deprived yourself of any other options. You’re stuck.
If a task is in the hands of the private sector, there is generally the opportunity to choose between competing providers of a product or service, which tends to make people work harder to earn your business. Is the market a perfect solution? of course not, it’s just a better solution than having no options.