Infuriating Customer Service
Jun 8th, 2009 | By Dan O'Neil | Category: Communication, businessI’ve recently (well for a few months now) received some really poor customer service from a well known rentals by post company in the UK. I’m not going to go into the details here, nor am I going to name and shame – it’s not my style. I see this as an opportunity to learn some really important points.
The main challenge I’m having, and I believe this is true of almost all poor customer service, is that I’m really struggling to be understood. This particular company prefer to do everything by email and I have sent in the region of 15 emails about their service in the last 6 months. To their credit, each time I have contacted them, they have replied within a few hours, however they seem to have a set of stock responses that do not relate to the challenges I’ve experienced.
In any situation where a customer or client makes a complaint, it is critical that your customer services representatives get straight to the root of the problem, without making assumptions about what their customer is experiencing. In the IT world, (where I worked before becoming a coach) the help-desks would always ask the obvious questions such as, “is it switched on at the wall” and “have you tried rebooting the computer”. I’m sure if you’ve had those conversations with an IT help-desk, you’ll have some idea of how frustrating it is.
I’m happy to allow one of these stock responses – I can understand that help centres must receive a good proportion of complaints where the user is doing something wrong. However, when a company continues answering your enquiries with these stock responses, it becomes immensely irritating. Rather like having a conversation with someone who is clearly only interested in hearing themselves speak. It feels like you are banging your head against a brick wall and there seems to be no solution. If you allow your customers to get to this point, you are pretty much guaranteed to have lost them for good.
One of the major problems that large companies have chosen to take on, is when they outsource their help and customer relations to a country where their staff speak the customers language only as a second language. Immediately, in such difficult communications, you are creating a barrier. If your customer or client feels like they are not being heard or understood (which sadly is often the case) they immediately feel that you are a company who do not care and all trust is lost. Many complaints are complicated in their nature and even if the user is in error, the customer service staff must first understand their point of view before explaining the correct procedure or pointing out what they may do differently.
The bottom line is that you don’t get many chances to make a good impression – especially in an economic climate that people feel uncomfortable in. The most upset and angry of customers can easily be turned into a trusting, loyal customer with a little understanding from someone who represents your company. It strikes me that when you receive poor customer service, you immediately assume that the company doesn’t care about it’s customers. The truth is probably that they are doing things on the cheap and paying the price for that in their customer service.
There is no situation that cannot be resolved in an agreeable way – with good customer service, where the client feels heard and understood, you are 95% of the way there.
Dan – I completely agree. I make a point of replying to all of my customer inquiries as fast as I can, and with a real personal responce. Not some form letter. Sure, sometimes it is frustrating when customers ask me why they never had to enter shipping information for my product (which is clearly stated as an audio download), but most of the time the questions are ones that require personal replies. I can only imagine that stock replies don’t mix well with personally written questions asking for advice. If I send a stock reply I’m sure those potential customers will never become customers. I’ll lose them.
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Dan O’Neil says… Thanks Chris.
I cannot stand dealing with customer service in India. The people are nice and their English is good enough, but the main problem I have is that they don’t have the authority to help you with anything. If you need them to find a password or change an account number, often they can’t do it without consulting a higher authority… in another country. Therefore tasks that should take 15 minutes can end up taking a few days.
Dan O’Neil says… Thanks for your comments Alfred. It is a shame that this seems true, if these representatives were allowed to think for themselves and make decisions, then the problems would be less likely to arise. However I guess the whole idea is that you get what you pay for!
I hate having to deal with crummy customer support, I use a lot of different programs and tools for my online marketing efforts and it is so annoying to have incompetent support help. It can really make or break a business or service. The greatest looking tool in the world is of no use if you cant figure out how it works and get no response from the people who are supposed to help.
Dan O’Neil says… There’s frustration in your comment! Thanks Steve.
I found myself laughing and nodding in agreement to one part in your post:
“the help-desks would always ask the obvious questions such as, “is it switched on at the wall” and “have you tried rebooting the computer”.”
I always felt like saying, oh you know, you’re right…I didn’t even Plug my computer in, silly me.
Anyway, I agree with you that even in the toughest situations you can come out with a positive result through customer service, but you have to be sincere and UNDERSTAND your customer/client.
Dan O’Neil says… Thanks David.
Dan – we all get our share of poor customer service. One thing I’ve learned is to focus on the results and not on my feelings and frustrations. And yes, compassion goes a long way too in achieving a win-win situation.
Chris – I’m totally with you on non-use of form letters. Trying to connect to customers is more important than empty words.
Cheers!
Dan O’Neil says… Thanks C.
I agree with Chris. Even if the personal reply doesn’t immediately solve the problem the customer are facing, he will still appreciate and feel comfortable with it.
Dan O’Neil says… Thanks.
I used to work in a call centre and tbh the way i was trained was for effecincy and not to treat customers first. it was all about profit unfortunatly
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Dan O’Neil says… The good news is that unless companies realise the importance of their customer care, they will not survive in these economic conditions.
oh my god you are abolutly right, its so frustrating dealing with customer service sometimes its strange because dont you want to give your clients the best service possible?
Dan O’Neil says… As a consumer you tend to stick like glue to those companies that do.
I hear ya with the customer service that just has email. It’s infuriating at times. Typically it takes 24-48hrs for a person to reply and they never actually understand what you say.
I understand when you outsource the service of customer service that they have protocols to follow, just to make things easier. Typically they’ll reply back with one of the protocols and you have to email them again.
Lastly, when they’re outsourced, they typically can only do so much at their location. A lot of times they just need to forward it on to the actual business to do something and you have to wait again.
It’s a headache.
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Dan O’Neil says… That pretty much sums it up.
Dan, a company I use to work for did outsource its customer support for a specific product as a trial experiment to see if they would then migrate its entire customer support–tier I and II–to contractors. The experiment fortunately failed because not only did incongruous communications play a part, customers knew there was no “heart” in the support voice on the other end. Thankfully managers knew where the bottom line existed and mattered most.
Dan O’Neil says… There is hope for some companies then!
I’ve had a similar problem with AOL in the past. If you try and go through the phones then they pass to from person to person until you get bored and put the phone down. If you email them with a very specific question you just get sent back a stock answer which doesn’t answer the question at all.
Dan O’Neil says… I’m pretty sure that most people have a company or two who are on their list of do not use. It’s stuff like this that alienates customers.