The Demise of Customer Service
Image via Wikipedia
What a Horrible Experience Knowing that You are a Dying Breed! It isn’t a species, but it could be. It is Customer Service. It is touted in every management meeting, in every Human Resource Office (HRO), in all the service oriented businesses across this country and around the world, but is it really alive and well.
There is no doubt there are businesses who pride themselves on the treatment of the customer. But, then there are those who have lock-jaw, cold shoulders, the deaf ear, and so many other descriptive terms that the customer probably has heard or seen more than is listed here.
Why, you ask is this epidemic so common. Part of the problem is the increase in technology, the internet, and the lack of training and communication skills of the customer service or sales representative. The second part of this equation is the arrogance of the business itself. The demand and the expectation of good service is ignored. Many businesses function as though they are immune to or in actuality not required to be responsive to the demands of the patient. (customer). Another aspect of this problem is that the lack of communication and social skills of many of the new employees. The youth have in some cases such a bad case of cell phonitis they cannot respond to the needs of the patient-customer. Their deficit in these basic skills leads to chills, colds, fever and then the demise of the customer and in some cases the death of the entrepreneur.
One glaring sore upon customer service is the business who thrives on the term customer service, but in reality turns a blind eye, or puts impediments in the way to discourage the customer from demanding good service.
It is common today to receive from businesses like Wal-Mart, Time Warner Cable, and other customer oriented services, situations in which, customer service representative is out sourced to a foreign business in a country where English is at best average or unclear leaving the customer confused and frustrated. The chat or e-mail solution process can be just as bad because of poor writing and communicating skills in English.
The most frustrating aspect and damaging to customer service is when the employees of a large business like Wal-Mart has sales or other personnel working the aisles and they don’t speak English or cannot even tell where an item is by location.
Customer Service is an art, it is a part of business, which takes practice, time, and ultimately communication. It must be emphasized that not all businesses are callous, cold, and without good customer service, even those who are callous do have good people working for them and in spite of them.
Customer Service is not as vibrant or healthy as it once was, I am not sure with the continued impersonal touch it will get much healthier.
Related articles
- Customer service (gailwrites.wordpress.com)
- Propose Your Own Solution to Customer Service to Get What You Want [Customer Service] (lifehacker.com)
- US Bankcard Services, Inc. Earns A+ Rating from BBB (prweb.com)
- Customer Service Done Right In 10 Easy Steps: Step 9 (customerthink.com)
- Why Just Service Customers When You Can Engage Them? (community.constantcontact.com)
- Facebook complaints: Companies are asleep at the wheel (management.fortune.cnn.com)
- The 10 Retailers With the Best Customer Service (fool.com)
I couldn’t agree more, especially your statement about how customer service is “touted in every management meeting” of some companies, while the execution is questionable. This is frustrating and confusing, from the perspective of customers and top-notch customer service employees.
I can readily identify a couple of things that probably contribute to the decline of customer service. One is the overall general “coarsening” of society and another is the decline of smaller, owner-operated retail businesses.
I used to shop at several establishments (that no longer exist) where the owner and/or sales people (who viewed their job as a career) knew me by name and I knew them by name. It’s a lot harder to be rude and uncaring if you have a personal relationship with someone — even if that relationship is a fairly superficial one. Plus the owner was typically someone who lived in the community (not some absentee owner or faceless corporation) and would not tolerate one of their staff being unhelpful or unpleasant with a customer.
Bigness tends to breed an impersonal atmosphere and attitude. It takes a lot of constant effort for large operations to develop and maintain a staff with a positive customer service attitude.