Has Customer Service Gone To Pot?
Dick at the Ask the Wizard blog has posted an interesting piece on Customer service. This is a subject I can particularly relate to at the moment due to a run of bad luck with flaky contractors, and poor customer service. Is it just be noticing a trend these days of poor customer service? I have a feeling it’s not just me, hence this little rant…
Dick talks about the two ways to embed the customer within your company:
- Company has only one constituency, it’s customers (not stakeholders like shareholders, industry partners, etc). Companies that serve multiple constituencies have “good reasons” why they just can’t provide their customers with [insert something the customer values].
- Transparency: More information is better than less. Lack of transparency leads to anger, frustration and mistrust.
I have forwarded Dick’s article to all the companies that have pissed me off recently:
- My web host that goes down every week with a lack of timely information on what is causing it, or what they are doing to resolve the problems.
- Our Internet provider that has delayed moving our connection for 3 months due to their own internal errors processing our order.
- The builder who went on holiday without telling us he wouldn’t be available.
If this doesn’t help, then I’ll have to send the message the traditional way - my taking our business elsewhere, but I really hope this trend towards poor customer service changes.
How can so many companies get it wrong?
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