What is It Like Today to Get a Customer Service Person to Answer a Simple Question? |
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By: Arnold Nadler Posted: 2006-11-29 00:19:15 |
| In general most of us have extremely fast paced lives with no time to waste. Therefore if a service or product we rely on has a problem, we need that particular company to provide us with excellent fast customer service.Is this the type of service we are receiving?With some of the companies we deal with absolutely, I would have to say businesses with the personal touches are becoming more old school thinking. With technology advancing at such a rapid pace, businesses are trying new ideas how they can save money, and still provide clients with customer service.Has situations like this happened to you?All of sudden you are having trouble receiving and sending e-mail. The problem has gone on for over an hour; you happen to be waiting for an important message to come threw. So you decided to give a quick call to the customer service. All you want to know is how long until service is resumed?You pick up the phone, dial the number and are immediately greeted by some computer generated voice that is demanding information to direct your call. All you want to know is when the service will be resumed, but that is not part of this computer generated voice program. After you have gone through everything, there are six options to choose from to direct your call. Once transferred, you are greeted by anther computer generated voice which explains their current situation. All their representatives are serving other customers, your call is important to them, please hold on to keep your priority. Why should they program a status message, saving you some time?While on hold they play this wonderful music to calm your frustrated sole. Every few minutes the music is interrupted with the same message how important you are, hold for your call priority, or a sales pitch on a new service they are introducing. All you want to know is when will the service be resumed?After almost an hour of holding on the line, some technical support person picks up.He starts with good day my name is, how can I help you? I just want to know when your service will be resumed? He does not answer your question, instead continues on to demand your name, and then wants to verify your user information. You explain about holding on the line for almost an hour, you have other things to do, why should you have to go through all this to have a simple question answered, like when will your service will be resuming?He then says with a cheery voice, I will be happy to answer any questions after verification of your user information. Most people at this point might think the generated voice seemed to understand better. So with no choice in the matter, you reluctantly give the information required. Ok, now will you just please tell me when your service will be resumed? He explains they are having some technical problems in a few areas, but he needs to check your settings, just incase the outage is your problem. You want to avoid ever having to call back, better safe than sorry!!! He then directs you through the process on your computer; the good news is that your settings are perfect. What a surprise!!!Then you are requested to hold, so he can check everything with your service from their end.Fifteen minutes later he returnsHe apologizes for keeping you waiting, but there is good news once again, there is nothing wrong with your connection. You make the mistake of wanting to know how long will it take before your service is resumed? Guess what? Yes, you are put on hold again. Ten minutes later, he apologizes for keeping you waiting, and apparently spoke to some supervisor who was not exactly sure when the service will be resumed.Getting off the phone with the customer service guy is a challenge in it self.Do you have any other questions? Even if you did it is just too tiring . Did you hear about their new wonderful promotion? Not interested. Did you know we can save a whole lot of money? Not interested. Do you use more than blank a month in whatever? Not interested. Do you mind if I send you an e-mail about are conversation, and the new promotion. I have to go!!! Did I serve you well today? Thanks for choosing our company, have a nice day!! Now you get off the phone, can not believe that after all this time you still have no idea when your service will be resumed.Final ThoughtI do not really blame the employees, they have been trained this way, and some of the conversations are taped to make sure they follow the protocol. With that said, can you see any of their big executives actually being satisfied with this type of customer service? As a comparison, just imagine what reaction Donald Trump might have after spending over an hour on the phone to answer a simple question. He would probably find the executives responsible and say, you are fired!!!I believe this is the companies’ way of discouraging people from actually calling for any support, and just having their customers accept whatever they decide to give them. We need the companies to know that are time is worth money too, and that they are not getting away with treating us like second class citizens. If it was not for us paying for their service, they would not be in business. So Il would like to leave you with one final question. When will the service be resumed? |
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