There’s also this:

If the experience is bad enough, consumers may take their business elsewhere, but most never tell a company’s executives why they left. Some are venting on Internet sites such as complaints.com, planetfeedback.com and thesqueakywheel.com. But for the most part, “very few companies hear anything from consumers, so they just think they’re hot stuff,” Tschohl said. Ronald C. Goodstein, a professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, said that research has shown that 40 percent of customers leave firms because of poor service. “That’s the number one reason, far and away, why people switch brands — and most never even tell a company,” he said.

Funny, that’s exactly why I left SprintPCS this month, and when I called to close my account after my number was successfully ported, they told me the account had been closed automatically when the port when through, and didn’t even ask why I’d left. Customers don’t tell companies why they’re leaving because the companies have made it abundantly clear in every transaction that they don’t care if the customer is, in fact, satisfied. SprintPCS had a perfect opportunity to give me a parting survey, but did they even try? Nope.

I’ve personally experienced the SprintPCS runaround and the AT&T “no supervisor” trick, although AT&T’s far superior in-store service redeems them — SprintPCS’s runaround actually included instore staff on multiple occasions.

Good stuff, Tino, as usual.

This is something that has been vexing me quite a bit. I don’t understand what’s so hard about DEALING with an issue. It must be a bureaucracy thing, something that’s inescapable once an organization gets to be a certain size. The only thing I’ve figured out that I can do is patronize small independent businesses with good service. Now that I can afford the higher cost (as opposed to my college/starting-out days), I’ve found that the higher cost is SO worth it.

Do you want better service? Here’s a tip. The next time you speak to a customer service representative, afford them the same amount of respect you would give to the president of the company. I guarantee you will have the best customer service experience of your life.

I’d be willing to wager my next vacation day that NONE of you, from the person who wrote the article, to the person who last posted before me, could do my job and take the amount of abuse that I do in a day.

I have said it once here before, and I’ll say it again. Customer service is not on the decline. However customer’s having common sense, let alone common courtesy is rare if not nonexistant.

I have said it once here before, and I’ll say it again. Customer service is not on the decline. However customer’s having common sense, let alone common courtesy is rare if not nonexistant.

Maybe, just maybe the reason customers don’t have any ‘common courtesy’ is because they are tired of the one-sided arrangements of most consumer transactions these days. I’ll admit that I have occasionally been guilty of being rude to customer-service people on the phone. Usually, but not quite always, when I’ve lost my temper I have apologized.

I am usually very polite, though; it’s not the fault of the person on the phone that things have gone wrong, and I’m more likely to get the result I want if I have that person on my side, rather than thinking I’m an asshole.

My experience, though, is that things still don’t go right. I’m polite, the people on the phone are polite, and everyone is very friendly. Despite the fact that we’re all chums, though, things still don’t get resolved because nobody in the company actually has the authority to do anything. (Companies where employees can actually get things done generally don’t have terrible customer-service problems.)

I’m not thinking of something going wrong and a phone call being necessary to set things right; I’m thinking of the times where phone call after phone call after personal visit fails to change the situation at all despite the fact that everyone is in agreement. I’m thinking here of the time it took me a week of phone calls to get my bank to change my address — they had two separate systems where the address was stored, and they only bothered to update one of them. I’m thinking of the time it took two months of phone calls to get an in-warranty mobile phone replaced — because the mobile phone company just has no procedure at all for replacing faulty merchandise that they’ve sold. I’m thinking about the remote control that I’m still missing for my new video camera because Circuit City cannot manage to order the right part despite numerous attempts — because the people doing the order see ‘remote control’ and don’t look at the part number clearly written on the order. I’m thinking about the replacement gas jets for my stove that took me four months to get from Sears — because Sears uses two part-number schemes for their products, and they’re not entirely aware of this.

I agree that you don’t deserve to be treated badly simply because some of your employer’s customers are unhappy. But your defensiveness — your insistence that the customers are the real problem, despite the Washington Post story’s several well-documented customer service disasters, comments from customer-service experts, and admissions of fault from the companies involved, illustrates part of the problem.

The object of any commercial enterprise is to make money. Obviously you could make the most money by only selling your product or service to people who are intimately familiar with it and who follow all of your company’s procedures to a T, and thus who don’t require any customer support.

The sad truth is that, for nearly all products and services, that market of experts is very small. If you get a lot of calls from customers who can’t understand your bills — maybe your bills are confusing. If you get a lot of customers who are upset at how they’re being treated — maybe you’re actually treating ‘em like crap. The customer, the person whose money you want, is the ultimate judge of whether or not your service is good. In some cases, you might want to raise your prices, thus eliminating some of your most skinflinty customers and at the same time increasing the resources available to serve the ones who are left.

Getting defensive and insisting to angry customers that everything is fine and that they are the problem is not a winning strategy, and will definitely result in the customers having less respect, and more animosity, for you and your company. Perhaps your hostility toward customers — which is quite clear here — is coming through in your conversations with them?

I agree that you don’t deserve to be treated badly simply because some of your employer’s customers are unhappy. But your defensiveness — your insistence that the customers are the real problem, despite the Washington Post story’s several well-documented customer service disasters, comments from customer-service experts, and admissions of fault from the companies involved, illustrates part of the problem.

I really wish that it were just a matter of my being oversensitive, defensive, or that I just didn’t care. If it were only me, then I could solve the problem by simply adjusting my attitude, tempering my judgements, or finding another job.

But there is NO EXCUSE for what I and others like me endure of rudeness, sarcasm, abuse, name calling, screaming, racial slurs, threats and outright tantrums.

Everything you stated in your comments I may have agreed with if you hadn’t completely proven my point by admitting to participating in such behavior yourself. Of course, I’m sure that your particular case merited this and that you would never result to any extremes, maybe only mild sarcasm or insults? (Much like my sarcasm here.)

For every documented case they have where customer service went awry, I promise you I could counter with the very moment when that experience turned sour. And most likely it began with a customer screaming at the person they deem to be non-human on the line. As for the lady with the washer handle problem, I find it very hard to believe that she found not one person out of thee different companies who cared not one whit about her problem. The article doesn’t mention her attitude, demeanor, or tone when she called to each of the representatives she spoke with. That’s the part of the story you NEVER hear.

Do you know I actually had a lady tell me on the phone once, “I’m not screaming at you, I’m screaming at your company.” Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? She knew she was being unreasonable, rude, and downright childish, but she brandished this phrase as her entitlement to bad behavior.

FYI: making sure you get your way 100% of the time is not the object of providing good customer service. Crediting your bill, whether you understood it or not, is not the object of good customer service. And putting up with behavior people don’t tolerate from your average toddler is also not in my job description.

My job is to promote our company, educate customers about our services, and provide quality, caring, intelligent information and follow it up with appropriate action.

I can, will, and every day, accomplish this. I can do it even better if you just don’t curse at me first.

Wow, what great comments. I agree with what everybody is saying, from the dissatisfied customers to the customer service associate above. Yes, Customer Disservice is widespread. It’s ugly. It’s unbearable. But with a little patience and respect (on both sides) it can be less of a struggle. I know, you’re thinking I’m some sort of hippie who thinks we can all get along…actually, I know we can’t (and I’m not a hippie). But I do have quite a bit of experience in the field of Customer Disservice. For years I’ve been helping friends and family solve their horrible customer service problems with great success. A friend and I had it down to a science, and we actually wrote a book about it called “Service this: Winning the war against Customer Disservice.” It’s definitely written from the consumer perspective (as opposed to the stuffy, corporate point of view in every book out there) and delves into everything from showing some common courtesy (even to the most criminal of customer service associates) to writing effective communications to even contacting the top execs at faceless corporations—all so you can fight bad customer service and get the level of respect, attention and overall service that you deserve. While Customer Disservice is never going to go away, it can be a more tolerable experience…may your shopping experiences be rewarding, and at the very least, slightly free of Customer Disservice!!!

Adam Last Chapter First www.lastchapterfirst.com

Customer service sucks. Bottom line. I just got that “Service This” book the person in the last comment was talking about. It’s very cool and totally helps put companies in their place. I’m not saying that customer service people deserve to be abused but it’s gotten pretty bad out there for customers. Later.

It seems to me that one of the major problems with the appliances of today lies in engineering. Products are delivered with unsatisfactory (actually recalled) parts. Let’s make decent products! I purchased all G.E. appliances for my new home in 1996. By 2003, all but the dishwasher have been replaced (and it was the first to need service!). I will not ever, ever, ever buy another G.E. product again. Recently, my financial broken advised the purchase of a segment of their company for my IRA. I asked what companies were involved……she said G.E. was one of them……..I said “NO WAY!” Buy something, anything else!