The worst part is when this fake sincerity with no interest in actually helping creeps its way into smaller companies and startups.<p>For example, I'd been using Wunderlist for a long time and was a very happy user. They don't charge money, but I would have gladly paid whatever they asked. Then one day I woke up and found all my tasks were gone! Well that's what I thought at first. I soon realized they weren't gone, they had just all been removed from their respective categorized lists. I filed a ticket [1], and then emailed them when I received no response.<p>After several back-and-forth exchanges with their support, the answer I received was, sorry, we cannot restore your lists to any previous state and we don't know why it happened, all you can do is manually move them all back to their lists. All 1022 tasks. By hand. With no explanation or guarantee that it won't just randomly happen again at any point in time. And then they tack on their "apologies for the trouble". Absolutely astounding.<p>Not to mention, their response that they "can't move tasks from one list to another", or that it's not possible for them to restore my data to a previous state, is either a lie and a complacency, or it's extremely concerning in that they don't apparently have backups of data.<p>So yeah, my point is, when large companies do it, I somewhat expect it as part of their economies of scale; at least it's not personal (which could be a good and bad thing). When a small company does it, it feels almost like a betrayal.<p>EDIT: Got so caught up I forgot to mention my actual point.<p>[1] <a href="http://support.wunderlist.com/customer/en/portal/questions/989352-all-tasks-for-a-list-got-moved-to-inbox-including-completed-?new=989352" rel="nofollow">http://support.wunderlist.com/customer/en/portal/questions/9...</a>
I experienced this recently when I was trying to dispute a declined RMA claim for a motherboard. The support person said over and over how sorry she was that I was having trouble, and how much she wanted to help, and how she really hopes that I can get my problem solved, while simultaneously completely denying any possibility of doing anything at all to address my issue. It was incredibly frustrating, and left me with the feeling that I was being told very politely to go fuck myself.<p>Incidentally, that intensely negative experience was the first time in a long while that I didn't get asked to fill out a "brief survey" regarding my experience with support. I can't imagine why...
Given all the fees airlines are happy to take for checked bags, you'd think they would at least give a check at the baggage claim exit that the bag you picked up is, indeed, your bag.<p>Every now and then at LGA I'll get someone at the exit of the baggage carousel ask me to cross-check my claim ticket with the one on the bag, but it's very rare.<p>Given how the airlines have gotten the TSA to check ID on tickets to verify that there aren't people using other folks' tickets, how expensive would it be to get someone to consistently check bags on the way out?<p>I know, I know - preaching to the choir and all that - but it's still frustrating that this is a solvable problem.
It continues to amaze me that companies even use people -- many of them so tightly constrain what the people say, you might as well be talking to robots.<p>Not only is this terrible service, this is terribly dehumanizing to everybody involved. It tells me that the company could care less about its people -- and the people could care less about me. You'd be better off just insulting people. At least it'd be more honest.
Same idea:<p><i>"Service is not something that happens according to a script. It is an intuitive interaction between a rep and a customer that has a different outcome every time. A company that encourages its reps to handle the situation the way the rep would want to have it handled if he were a customer is the company that wins repeat business--in spite of the problem that required the service in the first place."</i>
<a href="http://www.inc.com/vanessa-merit-nornberg/how-to-empower-your-customer-service-reps.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.inc.com/vanessa-merit-nornberg/how-to-empower-you...</a><p><i>As far as the customer is concerned, the employee represents the whole company. That employee is a fractal of the CEO. They have the authority, the autonomy, the trust and the expectation that when they talk to the customer, they’re going to solve the customer’s problem.</i>
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/oreillymedia/2012/09/12/connected-company/2/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/oreillymedia/2012/09/12/connecte...</a>
This attitude is a side effect of having stovepiped bureaucratic thinking, you find it whereever Support, Marketing and Customer Service are three different divisions with different bottom line responsibilities.<p>What I think is surprising is that this doesn't always happen in large corporations either.<p>I managed a local pizza shop as a very green manager and the owner called me to task for worrying about 'wasting' toppings by putting too many on a pizza. His thought was that what I thought of as 'waste' was actually 'cheap marketing'.
In my opinion, when a company does this to you, you should leave. Immediately.<p>This is a problem and we need to look for solutions. Why should I continue to support a company that doesn't care? Wouldn't you rather pay a little more and have decent customer service? Usually this means you support local merchants.<p>Recently I purchased a plasma TV locally, and paid tax! Crazy, I know! But when it's time for service, I know the company will stand behind it. We need to stand behind these companies.<p>EDIT: Free plug to the retailer: Abt Electronics :)
"What’s so sad too is how little it would often take to resolve the situations. You bend a policy here, you expedite an order there, you bubble an issue up to a manager."<p>This might be harder than it looks. A lot of customer care is outsourced. The vendor's employees aren't in a great position to bend, or bubble, or expedite much, if anything.<p>Calls come in, data goes out, but .. who do you bubble a problem to when 'the company' is far away and you only deal with them within the confines of a system?
I had a phone support rep yesterday admit that she did nothing to help my problem, and then in the same breath asked if I was satisfied with her help during the call - clearly for some sort of performance metric.<p>That's infuriating bureaucracy at it's finest.
"You bend a policy here, you expedite an order there, you bubble an issue up to a manager. A natural, caring organization designed to create passionate customers stretches and bends."<p>While it is possible it is also extremely difficult when you have a large legacy workforce.<p>For whatever reason the people who work in those jobs are cut from a particular bolt of cloth.<p>Changing that is extremely difficult and assuming they have the requisite intelligence and skills to operate differently is a stretch. Examples that you could point to that have successfully done this are most likely limited to a) companies formed from the start with a certain attitude (say zappos) or b) companies who have enough profit margin in their products to pay and motivate people better and take the hit for wrong decisions (say Neiman Marcus, Coach or name your luxury brand).
I had a billing issue with Time Warner Cable where I had fees that were not being paid. My service is through an agreement with my employer and TWC and my service is discounted and paid for directly out of my paycheck. So one day, my internet was shut off. I called and found out I had a past due balance of around $30 because I had been being charged "modem lease" fees for the past few months, never received a bill, and for whatever reason, the fee wasn't deducted from my pay automatically like the other fees are.<p>I tried really hard to explain the situation - that I don't get bills, wasn't notified of the charge or change in policy, and wanted to see what could be done. Well, customer support couldn't do anything other than take payment. I even asked to speak to a supervisor, only to receive the same story. Since my internet connection was being held hostage (I forgot to mention that this happened at like 4:30pm on a Friday), I reluctantly handed over my credit card info.<p>On Monday afternoon, I called them back threatening to cancel. When asked why, I relayed my story back to them. Lo and behold, they gave me my money back.<p>Not that I had any respect for TWC's customer service to begin with (I've had some interesting situations with them in the past), but this one really struck me as insulting. My situation didn't matter to them at all until I was ready to cancel my service. As soon as that was a possibility, they gave me my money back as soon as they could.
In journalism school, one of the first lessons our indepth journalism professor taught us was to never say "I understand" as a reaction to an interview subject telling you about something tragic...because you <i>dont</i>. What you're supposed to say in response to a lament...either there isn't a uniform response or I don't remember, but just getting to the point and asking questions seemed to work...people don't need to be insulted or patronized when they're feeing grief.
The thing no one mentions is that this is an inevitable side-effect of scale. It's hard enough to do good customer service in small brick and mortar stores where your ratio of employees to customers is high. When you scale up a business to the size of an airline, good customer service is a glaring cost and an easy thing to ditch in competition.<p>Economies of scale give us better prices but it happens are the expense of customer service. We learn to lower our expectations.
I actually think that software plays a huge role in causing this horrible customer service from airlines as well. I am a frequent flyer on American (125k miles last year) and have had numerous experiences that led to this conclusion. One experience in particular happened on a recent trip to Europe.<p>On this particular trip I was flying on a code-share BA flight (this means a flight I bought as AA, but flew on a BA plane). Normally with my flyer status I can upgrade to a good seat without issue. I was however booked in a terrible middle seat on my return flight. I called AA and they couldn't figure out how to upgrade me. I called BA, same thing. I called American Express Travel, they couldn't figure it out either. The response I got from everybody was very helpful (I get better customer service than most people, due to my flyer status), but they simply couldn't figure out how to actually make the change in their system. When I got to Heathrow, I asked a BA agent at the counter if she could change my seat. She couldn't figure it out so she called another person over who was more experienced. This lady then 'hacked' away on her terminal for literally 10 minutes. She was giving me updates the entire time on what she was doing. She tried a variety of different options to change my ticket until she found one that worked.<p>While there certainly is a human aspect and a policy aspect to bad customer service with Airlines, I believe that some of the problem is the result of the customer service representatives having to deal with really really bad software. Most of them simply don't actually know how to make the changes that customers want so they just tell them it isn't possible. My guess is that if the airline industry was able to massively upgrade their software you would see a huge improvement in customer service simply because the representatives would actually be able to accomplish the requested tasks.
Whenever a customer service drone starts off their end with:<p>"I'm so sorry to hear that you're having $PROBLEM_DESC. That must be so frustrating for you."<p>I really have to hold back the urge to scream. At least fiddle around with the fucking words a bit, don't use exactly the same template as everyone else who has trained their drones to respond in exactly the same way.<p>I'm getting angry just thinking about this.
This is exactly why customer service in startups far exceeds that of large businesses. But it also makes sense. In a startup with <50 employees, it's pretty easy to reach one another so if there is a true customer issue, it can be taken to the founders if necessary. But once a company gets big, there is a communication barrier and hierarchy exists--so a customer service rep cannot contact somebody internally to help as easily, hence the cliche, “'we apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced'”.<p>Furthermore, the company cannot just allow customer reps to 'bend a policy here, [...] expedite an order there, [...] bubble an issue up to a manager'. If you give them the freedom to bend policies, they can choose to draw their own lines and that can result in adverse effects for the company overall. Bending of rules is too risky for a large company to allow their customer reps to take. It's a slippery slope, but honestly one that doesn't seem to have much of a solution.
Customer server is important, but in order to build and maintain a truly good CS team you need to treat them like a good CS team.<p>This post mentions following rules too strictly as a big part of the problem. However, the bigger part of the problem is treating your employees, even your customer server employees, like hard working, creative, valuable people and not 10/hr calling center pawns. That means pay them a living wage, give them benefits, ask for their input, include them in the process and allow them to have a personality.<p>I've worked in CS for a large social networking site (about 11-12 million users), and even at those numbers the amount of anger and hatred poured at you day in and day out is hard to handle while remaining 'empathetic'. Luckily, we were allowed to be creative, to break rules and we got paid pretty well. Had it not been that way, I can guarantee you that on angry, idiot call/email number 49 for the day I wouldn't give a shit about you or your problems.
Its a mixed bag here. People wanted faster/cheaper product they got it in terms of cost cutting measures to the bottom line. Customer Service isn't something a profit driven company <i>wants</i> to do, its something they <i>have</i> to do to retain users. The idea of talking to a person seems enough for some people as they can vent their frustration at a CSR but I never felt that was good enough; when I did it it felt criminal.<p>But then you have companies that go out of their way to help you. They have the power to bend the rules and when its in your favor it can be an extremely rewarding experience as a customer. I'll always toot Valve's horn because of this. I placed an order and paid extra not to have DHL shipping to Canada (I've had too many bad experiences to count). Valve shipped it DHL anyway so I emailed customer service explaining my displeasure. They asked that I refuse the package when it arrives and they'll have the order correctly shipped with UPS as I instructed.<p>Not only did they ship my UPS order <i>before</i> the DHL had arrived and been subsequently rejected, they refunded my entire purchase. I'm a sworn customer now and more likely to overlook problems with Steam or busy season mishaps because they do things that keep their customers. Pleasant side effects for them? I'm on HN shooting free advertising (as if they need it here).<p>I'm always willing to pay more or deal with longer delays for local product now. My friends still scour the web to try and find the cheapest deal on the car stereo equipment or PC part but I keep it local. Sure I spent $40 more but I didn't deal with a kicked in box and the returns department. I didn't deal with foreign timezones and odd business hours to get a return receipt. Sure it was cheaper cash wise but my secure sound of mind is worth more than a few pennies. Always go with the underdog if they're capable of the services you are after. They <i>need</i> to please the customer to stay afloat unlike big box chains who don't have any obligation to you because there's someone standing behind you to buy the item you'll pass up if you don't follow their rules.
I was in a call with microsoft support once. The azure management portal was giving me a 500 error, and I had to get an alternate login or something to take some servers down and to put some up. Anyway, the conversation consisted of some Indian guy dispassionately reading and re-reading the same monologue about how sorry they were, and that my business is so important to them. Finally I snapped and told him that I'm not interested in apologies just give me a new account, get rid of the 500 error or do my bidding manually. That did a fat load of good, as he redoubled his efforts and reread everything again. With more dispassion and more emphasis on words, as if I was hard of hearing. The rage I was feeling at the time, can not be described with any words of man.
This is nothing more than having to put up with a system that is tested and optimized for the average reaction from consumers who use these services. Most people don't "realize that their only job is to get you off the line". They walk away happy.<p>I think solution might come in following forms: 1) staggered levels of customer service, 2) gradual education of consumers on how to protect their rights and deal with larger services, 3) regulation that corrects for the imbalance of info between businesses and consumers.
At the other hand, people don't want to pay for decent service. Yes, training and accommodating support staff is costly and it is almost never on the list with criteria before someone makes a purchase decision.<p>The cost of the product is certainly always a major criteria.<p>As a result, service is being cut in order to have a lower product price. Win-win on the short term. On the long term, the consumer punishes himself with this behaviour.
This approach seems to work. When 'work' means 'customer doesn't make an attack page'.<p>I don't read many pages from people were something went wrong, they called the company, and were politely fobbed off.<p>These interactions are frustrating, but not infuriating, and it is the infuriation that causes rage and causes someone to create an attack site.
Hypothesis: In some industries, good/profitable companies and good customer service don't go hand in hand. That is to say, the "end game", once all the companies in the industry "figure it out", is not one company with good customer service and slightly lower margins crushing its competitors.
Assuming that most transactions "just work", then these interactions are by definition at the margin, which means that fixing them probably isn't very profitable. I guess it's OK to complain about it -- I think it sucks, too -- but these companies are probably acting rationally.
I couldn't agree more. I would almost rather have Google's policy of essentially no support, at least they are clear about and do not add a false sense of help.
scaling customer service is hard; customer service is a cost center at scale; leadership wants to reduce costs. DHH cites telecoms and airlines as examples; Telecoms enjoy natural monopolies, so competition and the free market can't fix it; airlines compete solely on price, so it would be silly to invest in good customer service.
Empathy becomes insulting when it's not empathy.<p>Empathy becomes positively rewarding when it's sincere.<p>What a terrible, link-bait title. 37signals preaches honesty and hits me with that?<p>Edit: Real empathy is never insulting.
This should not be a front page article. I'm going to start flagging all 37 signals posts since they spam us with low content and brief posts I believe are only designed to feed traffic to their domain.
"There’s simply nothing worse than someone telling you how sorry they are when you can hear they don’t give a damn."<p>-- actually there is... they could easily be a jackass about it and tell you to screw off. First World Problems... smh