Several years ago when I was going to Toastmaster International meetings to improve my public speaking one of the speeches I did was on the topic of Customer Service. I entitled that speech “Customer Service is Dead” after a particularly bad experience I had shopping for furniture in Madison, WI; I would like to revisit the topic today.
Back in the late 1980’s while I was living in Madison, WI I went shopping for some new living room furniture to showcase my new apartment. There was a furniture store south of the Capitol square that featured many different styles of furniture including many contemporary urban styles that caught my eye. At the time I was a young business professional looking to set the “right” tone for my apartment one that befit an up and coming young supervisor.
Like anything that costs over several hundred dollars I set out to do my research and found just the right living room furniture for my place. I was ready to make the purchase and drove downtown in anticipation of purchasing my new furniture but found much to my chagrin that I was doing all the salesperson’s work! I drove the sale, setup the delivery time and was about to write the check when the clerk said that there would be an additional cost involved in completing the sale. I was shocked and upset because at no time did anybody at the store mention these additional costs or do anything to justify them. In anger I left the store and never returned to purchase my “prime” living room furniture.
This situation or some variation of it has happened to me many times since that Saturday so long along. Recently, as part of my efforts to start my business Yurway Coaching Consultants I made the decision to upgrade my Internet service to fiber optic cable and my nightmare with what passes for customer service in the US today was revisited here’s what happened.
I had consulted with a friend who is a computer network specialist and he recommended a local TV and Internet service provider, since I already had my DSL service and phone with them and thought it would make sense to upgrade my service and receive the computing horsepower to start my own business at home. I went online and ordered my new upgrade which they said could be done by myself with no service technician present. The installation date was set and the company was to send my new gateway, a piece of computer equipment necessary to access the Internet from my home before the installation date. Two days before the scheduled installation date I received an automated phone call from the Internet service provider reminding me of the installation date and just before their recorded message ended they said that if there was a problem with the installation to press this number. So I press the number and was connected to a service representative who asked several basic questions that they should have known and had in their database. After getting off the couch and walking downstairs to my basement office to get my account information the rep said that they would have to send a service tech to my location to do the installation because I was a new customer, I said fine and we schedule a time for the tech to stop by and do the installation.
When the installation date came the tech arrived and got my new Internet and phone service established and I was thrilled to have a faster Internet service connection and excited thinking about the possibilities I could do with the new, faster Internet connection; my story should have ended there but it didn’t. Several days later after a night of thunderstorms I woke up and got onto my computer and used the Internet. I attended a business meeting later that morning and sat down at my computer to do some work establishing my new business. I then noticed that I couldn’t get to the Internet, thinking that it was strange that I had gotten to the net earlier in the day; I rebooted the computer and started the process again—again no Internet access so I reach for the phone to call the service provider and that is when the nightmare really began.
I quickly realized that not only could I not access the Internet but my phone service was down and unavailable as well, so I picked up my latest bill from the service provider and tried to find the telephone number for customer service there was none. Undeterred I looked through the papers I received when I signed up for the service and call the 800 number, ah yes! A connection to a representative, but wait I had to be placed on hold and transferred to someone else. No problem I thought they’ll get to the bottom of this, well five minutes turned into ten minutes which turned into fifteen minutes which turned into twenty minutes, I was furious! Finally a representative came online and I explained the problem, no problem they said they’ll send a service technician to my home to check the installation and uncover the problem. Great! I say now we are getting somewhere they’ll discover the problem right!? Wrong!!!
The next day the service tech arrives as scheduled and says that it will take him about two hours to have me back online. Great! I say and go back to what I was doing, six hours later he tells me that there is nothing wrong with my equipment or the lines coming into my house but that the problem is with their transmission line and he will place a work order and that there will be another crew on the scene in two hours. Skeptical at this point I think to myself that they won’t be coming this evening but I should see someone from the company in the morning. The next morning comes and by 11 am there is no sign of a service crew at my house so I call the 800 number. I place the call and I’m immediately put on hold five minutes goes by, ten minutes you know the drill. Finally I’m talking with a representative who knows nothing about my service problem and assigns me a case number, then says that another service tech will be at my location the next day between the convenient hours of 8 am – 8 pm., no problem I have a cell phone I’ll be here when they arrive.
The next day comes and alas no service technician I wait one day and call to inquire about the status of my service outage. I call the 800 number get placed on hold and the whole 1,2, 20 minute wait time begins all over again. Well after taking the weekend to evaluate the situation I decide that I’ve got to switch ISP providers because this company while very apologetic can’t seem to make it happen. I call the first provider cancel the service and place an order with a second provider. All is going well I’m actually talking to a human being in the first few seconds of my call and they are getting basic information for my installation. After receiving my basic info she says that she will be transferring me to the installation department and that my confirmation number is such and such. I’m place on hold and after a few short minutes the installation department comes on and I tell them what I’m requesting and that I have a confirmation number, they tell me that it means nothing to them and we are about to finish the transaction when the phone connection drops, ugh!!! I call back the call drops again; I decide to call back the next day, and two more drop calls. I finally get to another representative and explain what I want and what has happened to me, he says that he will put me on “silent” hold and then it hits me—all those drop calls I had experienced weren’t dropped calls at all I was but on “silent” hold except nobody bothered to tell me the customer what was happening and since I has on a cell phone I naturally assumed that the calls had been dropped.
Well you’ve probably figured out that I received my Internet upgrade but the experience proved once again that customer service in this country is dead! Nobody at the first ISP provider knew what was happening with my service outage and their tracking systems couldn’t tell the representatives that I had a problem much less that one of their own technicians put in a work order for my location. With the second ISP provider one department was issuing confirmation numbers that the other department didn’t accept, what was the confirmation number for? Who knows?
Now you might be saying to yourself Jer this was just a case of you doing business with a large technology company and it’s not representative of customer service at other businesses or industries well I beg to differ. My house mate Lynn was at a large retailer last week and she had to go to the customer service counter; she found a long line of customers and began to wait. Well five minutes turned into ten minutes, turned into fifteen minutes you get the picture so being an assertive soul Lynn walks over to the checkout lines where the cashiers are standing around talking to one another. “Don’t you see this long line of customers at the service desk” she inquires “can’t one of you come over here and help this poor lady with all these customer requests?” At that moment a supervisor finally shows up and things really start to pick up at the service desk. Why did my friend Lynn have to request help for the overworked representative at the service desk? Didn’t store management plan for a larger volume of customers at the service desk during this busiest shopping time of the year? Why didn’t one of the cashier’s after a few minutes make a call to the supervisor on duty and request help at the service desk? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind the answer is that American business has forgotten what they are in business to accomplish and that is to satisfy their customers wants and desires.
Peter Drucker in his book The Essential Drucker states that “With respect to the definition of business purpose and business mission, there is only one such focus, one starting point. It is the customer. The customer defines the business. A business is not defined by the company’s name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the want the customer satisfies when he or she buys a product or a service. To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business. The question, What is our business? Can, therefore, be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of customer and market. All the customer is interested in are his or her own values, wants and reality. For this reason alone any serious attempt to state “what our business is” must start with the customers’ realities, his situation, his behavior, his expectations, and his values.”
What are your thoughts about customer service? Do you agree with me that it has died here in America and what do you think should be done about it? Let me know, all the best, Jer
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