rss
email
twitter
facebook

August 20, 2010

Answered Questions VI - Attention! Customer service in action!

It could be a joke, but it is not, especially when most customer care call numbers are not for free (at least in Spain). My point is, why in customer service departments so little attention is paid to the customer? That is what it seems, given the difficulty to communicate, to be understood, and to get a solution to a problem. The systems that I have known up to now are of two types: the bad, and the worst.

When I have to talk to a service provider I anticipate the pain, aye, aye. If by email, I feel somewhat more comfortable, but I have to work to make sentences terse, clear and concise. Mostly because I fear that if my request is poorly understood, I can spend weeks trying to clarify. That is considering that I receive an email in return, which seldom happens. By the way, it is nice to receive personal responses, but in those cases in which my name is misspelled or my gender changed, they lose a bit of charm, right?

Image: Daniel St.Pierre / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But all that is nonsense. The serious game starts with phone calls. I would not want this to seem one of those humorous monologues of comedians, but some situations are so pathetic sometimes that I could cry and laugh at them. The first goal is to reach a human being, sometimes difficult, because I first face machines (Interactive-Voice-Response systems), which at best are guided by keypad, but the more daring, the worst, ask me... to talk to them! And then I begin to look like the fool, and back at school vocalizing "I-want-to-talk-to-someone" so that the gear will say "Repeat your question." I know that voice recognition technology and grammar is complex, so do me a favor: stick it into a drawer until within forty years!

Those which are less sophisticated, and have a booth in a distant country of the same native language and lower labor costs, often have another problem. "All our advisers are busy, please wait a few seconds" and then I waste a lot of minutes waiting. Some play meanwhile an unbearable loud music. The worst, the worst take the opportunity to communicate new services and products. On top of having to wait, I'm paying for swallowing their advertisement!

When I get to talk to a human being, despairs of all kinds. For the record, here my regards to workers in call centers, for their patience, all after all they follow a script. Sometimes they end up just telling me "For your request I have to put you through another department”, and then I have to tell everything again. Sometimes when they do I lose communication and when I call back, I have to cross all the filters to get in touch with someone who knows nothing of my case, and have to start again. In the meanwhile, the minutes go by and I am paying. This is not a Call TV program, you know! Where is the prize?

So, what are all those damn consumer satisfaction queries and ISO quality circles for? You want me to tell you what I think? I will when you pay for the call!

Can it be done in a better way? I think so. But let's be honest, it would also very expensive. The company makes a product or service, which has a hundred uses up to the consumer, some hundred misuses, and a thousand more reasons to ask for support. The Company can not predict them all, though it tries, and therefore creates a series of protocols for a support a team to blindly follow, but bear in mind that they are not those who gave birth to the child, they not know it half as good. Gradually, I have acquired some knowledge of that script, and I think I begin to speak their language, so when I present my case, different from each and everyone else's as usual, I try to fit in their system of questions and answers to see if I get the correct output. In fact, it looks like a Call TV. (In any case I guess talking to the chief engineer, or CEO, is something that I can not afford.)

If only these departments were so solicitous, kind and insistent as their cousins in the sales side, who call and go after me offering, selling, improving, helping, no doubt I would enjoy better care, probably at a similar cost. Please company managers, since we live on the web two point zero, please switch on, and do like those courageous companies that set up community forums moderated by experts, host Wikis for customers so at least we can help each other or we can comfort each other, or both.

0 comentarios:

Post a Comment

 
Licencia de Creative Commons
Phototraps by Iván Cosos J.N.S.P.S. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.