Why Customer Service is dead and how to revive it
In our company, it became clear early on that building solid customer relationships is the key to success. That is why I find it amazing when some companies seem to ignore it.
I lost my credit card a while ago, so I called up Citibank to cancel it and get a new one. When i called after two weeks to tell them I hadn’t gotten the card yet, they apologized and said they’d overnight it this time. Three days later, I called them again – same story.
At this point, I asked the rep if I could get his direct extension, so that I wouldn’t have to explain my situation every time I called. He said that reps don’t have individual extensions. I could get his name, but I won’t be able to ask for him (again, no extensions). I would have to rely solely on their promise to document every conversation for future reference, which they failed to do the last two times.
My question is – what is the purpose of customer service here? If I could, I would gladly have done this online. Click to cancel the card and order a new one, get an email confirmation, check the status of the delivery. If all else fails, I could still call them up, but I’d also have an email confirmation to refer to (phone reps don’t do email confirmations).
When your customer would rather deal with your website than your employees, it’s time to rethink. Do real live reps add any value to the customer, even if it’s just peace of mind from talking to a real human being?
To me, they don’t. They work halfway around the world, carry heavy accents, and talk more like robots than human beings. Every time, they do the same routine. May I please get the account number? What is the password on your account? May I put you on hold while I pull up your information? Not to mention the hours spent on hold and being transfered to various departments (in the past month I’ve talked to Citi checking, Citi cards, Citi business, Citi business cards, Citi security and frauds, Citi online, Citi mobile).
Ask any librarian to help you find a book, and you’ll see how real customer service works. They empathize with your situation. They don’t hand you off to other librarians. They remember you the next time you visit. Most importantly, they make you feel at ease knowing that someone is on your case, doing their very best.
Here’s my advice to companies who want to stand out and deliver real value to its customers:
- Hire fewer staff, not more. Eliminate the need for human support by putting more functionality online and letting users resolve their issues quickly and easily.
- For the more difficult problems, hire and train better, more knowledgeable staff. They should be more like account executives, not phone reps. They should have an intimate grasp of the various parts of the company, and be able to fix most issues on their own. No more separate departments for personal and business. No more Level 1 and Level 2 reps (yes, they use these terms).
- Increase transparency. Use a blog to keep us updated on new developments. Use Twitter to get feedback and respond publicly. Use discussion groups to build a community of users.
- Don’t outsource customer service. It defeats the purpose.
For companies like Zappos, this approach is common sense. For others, it seems strange, counterintuitive, hippie-ish. But as many companies have proven, it works.
How many hours have you spent on the phone with customer/tech support in the last month? Or year? For me, it’s about 80 hours, with probably 1/2 of that time spent on hold. Share your count on twitter, with the hashtag #supporthours. And if you have any other ideas on how to fix this customer service problem, or have stories to share, comment below. Let’s help these companies figure it out, because they’re not doing it on their own!
Related posts:
The amazing thing a company like Citibank doesnt realize is that customer service and marketing are the same thing. Spending money on getting your customers what they want is the point of your business. Good customer service is an incredibly viral marketing strategy. It sounds so basic but good service will have people using your service more.
Great article about a pressing problem in life (and especially in New York City). Most companies don’t care about providing a helpful, enjoyable experience to customers – and no matter how good the product or low the price, it does make a big difference.
I would disagree about customer service being better at the library – Mid-Manhattan, at least, sucks – but the description still works in terms of how customer service should operate.
I would also like to call out the “New York point”. When you ask for something at a store in the city, the salesman invariably points in a general direction and then goes back to ignoring you. There is no attempt made to take you to what you are looking for. It’s disgusting, and terrible for business.
Those are my rants. Good job starting this discussion.
Working with a startup biz especially, there are so many little things that go wrong where you need technical help. After spending countless hours on the phone with web hosts, merchant companies for ecommerce, and of course banks, I now have a clear ranking of which companies to use in the future. I will gladly pay more money for a company that has live workers picking up phones all day long (and no terribly hold music). We should all put together a spreadsheet of companies sorted by category and rank them according to customer service. If it went public I feel like a lot of others like us would pay attention and ultimately so would the companies.
It’s kind of sad, but I avoid talking to real human support people at all costs. I would always rather resolve issues online. For those situations that require additional help I’ll suck it up and call, but it’s never a pleasant experience. One thing that I’ve found useful on some sites is the live chat function where you can get your answers in real time without all of the holding and transferring.
Totally agree with Matt about live chat being better than phone support. For some reason it’s much faster. Also, I can browse the web while I wait. One would think it would be easier to ask questions over the phone than type them out, but since you have to repeat everything three times anyway, it’s a wash.
A sad state indeed.
when running a business, the first thing you should do is always establish a good customer service..-