It amazes me that in this day and age how some companies still do not understand the importance of good customer service. It seems many are focused more on saving money and less on keeping customers happy. Customer satisfaction leads to continued business, referrals, and customer loyality. Inadequate customer service does the exact opposite and ends up being an enormous burden on a company, which in the end will cost more in future sales and lost customers than what would have been saved in reducing support costs.
Here is a perfect example. About six months ago I switched my telephone service over to a popular Voice-Over-IP provider. The savings for my family was be about $50 a month and with the explosion of cell phones, we have become less and less dependent on our home service anyway.
It started out great, the representative that helped with the setup was terrific and the service worked just fine. A couple of months later I ran into a problem and the only way the company allowed me to contact customer service was by calling their technical support line. Personally I would rather email my issue to the company because I like putting things in writing. There is less chance for confusion and it leaves a paper trail of what the problem was and the steps taken to resolve it.
Anyway, my call was transferred overseas to the company's support center. The representative was very fluent in English, but his accent was so thick I often had to ask him repeat himself. The real problem was not the accent though, it was his complete inability to help me with my problem. I would state the problem and the actions I took to try to correct it. He would then state what I needed to do, even though I had already done it. It was if he was just reading from a troubleshooting manual and not interacting with me at all. It was incredibly frustrating, so I ended the call and tried again with another rep. Same result. This happened on three separate calls and there was obviously a pattern.
After that experience, I got online and searched the Internet for other people's experiences with this company (something I should have done before I switched). I was amazing at how many people had taken the time to write about how bad this company's customer support was. I couldn't believe it.
After this ordeal I decided to cancel my service with this company. When I called to do it, the woman I dealt with (from the United States) was incredibly gracious. She asked why I wanted to cancel and tried to convince me to stay. I told her that if I had dealt with someone like her initially I would have stayed regardless of the problems I encountered, but I stated her company's customer service was so bad, there was no way I could continue doing business with them or recommend them to anyone else.
It is really too bad, this company's technology is absolutely terrific, but technology alone does not make a great company. The company I switched to was also a VoIP provider and while their technology is not as good, their customer service makes up for it. Problems don't happen often, but they do happen and the company that can make those problems the least painful are tops in my book.
James A. Cuoco is a frequent blogger and CRM Advisor |
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