I’m not sure when things related to customer service changed, but the changes seem more pronounced now than ever before.
I recall the days when what a customer thought was important to the company he/she was dealing with. I’m sure there are still a lot of small-town stores that still practice customer service, and that’s because customers are important to small businesses. When you start dealing with larger companies, the lack of customer service is more evident.
I also recall a time when you dialed a number to talk to someone at a company and you spoke to a person, not a recording telling you to press a number related to the reason for the call. Based on my experiences I can tell you there are too many companies that have “automated” their phone answering.
For example, when I had my concerns about a rental car and whether the size would be adequate for my needs, I called the car rental company and was greeted by, “Thank you for calling XXXX, your call is important to us. Please listen to the following message, as our options have changed.”
I sat and listened, waiting for an option that best represented my concern, so I could help the company figure out why I was calling. After a bunch of options were explained I chose one and pressed the corresponding number, expecting to be transferred to a person. Nope, I was asked to listen to more options. This time none were remotely close to what I needed to address my concern. I hung up and called again so I could listen to my options again, thinking I might have pressed the wrong number. Nope. I had the right number the first time, so I tried it again. This time I pressed a number, hoping to be transferred to a human being, so I could explain my reason for calling. Nope. A computer is what I was talking to. It told me to tell it the reason for my call. It even gave me some suggestions for what I might say. Never did it tell me how I could speak to a representative (assuming that would be a person). I kept trying to find a way to speak to a person, not the computer. I even tried the old trick of pressing several zeros in a row – it used to work but didn’t with this computer dude I was forced to try to reason with. I’m pretty sure I was on the phone for almost twenty minutes before a real, live, breathing human picked up the phone and asked how he could help me – with a very heavy accent.
I did my best to explain my problem, hoping there would be an easy solution. Nope. The company had policies in place that didn’t allow me to cancel my reservation without giving my credit card information so I could be charged $50 for making the cancellation. After the better part of an hour, and lots of frustration, I decided it was best to drop my request and hope to find a way to deal with my problem. Needless to say, I hung up the phone feeling that once the company had my payment nobody was working for that company that cared if I had concerns.
This was just one recent example. I’ve had more problems with companies and getting answers that left me more comfortable and less concerned. What I’ve learned is that the larger the company, the less the concern for making sure I was satisfied with my purchase. I’ve grown tired of dialing a phone number, hoping to speak to a person, and then finding myself listening to instructions to figure out which number I need to press to move on to the next step, with hopes of finding a voice that’s connected to a person with a beating heart.
Customer service and customer satisfaction aren’t gone – you can still find them in your small-town stores.
Have A Good Week!
