Customer Service

Nan General Thoughts, Opinion,

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I just read an article in the NPR newsletter that said a recent survey showed Americans are more unhappy with the customer service they’re getting than ever. I personally agree.

Although customer service can (and often does) involve one-on-one contact, I tend to think most of us complain the loudest about the service (?) we receive when we have to place a phone call to remedy a situation — and almost inevitably, we are met with a bot along with seemingly unlimited wait times!

For me personally (once I have pressed innumerable numbers to get to the appropriate department), I dislike reaching a person who is (most probably) based in another country and English is his/her second language. I already have difficulty hearing due to wearing hearing aids, but then I have to deal with someone who has an accent!  (I almost want to dance a little jig when I reach a person who speaks good English!)

Although telephonic automation is the go-to word for most companies nowadays, some do offer an email or online message system on their website — and for me, that method has worked the best. (I nearly always get a helpful response. 🙂)

What about you? How do you feel about today’s “Customer Service”? Have you found some companies are better than others in how they respond? What are your thoughts about the telephone “wait times?” And what about that “on hold” music?!!?

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Image by S K from Pixabay

84 thoughts on “Customer Service”

  1. Now I have an accent. Seems like you would cuss if it was I you were to be unfortunate to find at the end of the line.

    I think what I hate is sometimes having to wait on end to speak to someone on the other end. I have no problem with self help if the problem doesn’t require human intervention.

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  2. Like most else in the world today, when I call and receive a message that, “Your call is very important to us… please stay on the line and a ‘service representative’ will be with you as soon as possible,” I know I am being lied to at every step.

    My call is so unimportant to this business/service I am paying money for that only a ‘bot will receive it, that I should not stay on the line, that no one actually capable of servicing my problem will eventually get back to me, and that it will be entirely at their convenience should they so deign to talk to me at all. And then, as you say, Nan, a non-English speaking person might just so happen to decide I’m useful to them only so far as to offer practice for their obviously foreign tongue. Nothing about any of this says ‘customer service’ but in every way possible short of telling the truth the experience is ‘customer abuse’. And then YOU get to pay for the phone time.

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  3. Hate the waits. On-line the every expanding and changing security issues drive me nuts (but necessary, I suppose).

    Welcome to 2023, Bill. This computer and knowing how to use it is a necessity.

    When we recently ‘cut the cable cord’ wife dealt with a guy who would not take “we’re done” for an answer. They could not pass up one last chance to really piss her off. Yay them! What we have now is much better and a bit cheaper.

    The interaction CS virtually everywhere varies from painful to a nightmare. But face-to-face (even Wally World , banking, and the city) is usually mediocre to very good. Always better than phone “service” (is getting screwed really called ‘service’?). LOL

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    • i had very quick, efficient service at the…yes…DMV. Renewing my drivers license and even getting the special RealID took 15 minutes. California DMV offers their materials in 10 languages! Not sure if this represents a recent upgrade or if the usual suspects were doing their usual construction momentum nfts a year or so ago but…

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    • Like Nan, I have hearing aids. Fortunately they connect to my phone via bluetooth so I can hear things better, but lordy I hate Hate HATE phone-only support with the heat of a thousand suns.

      The most ironically frustrating example was about 5 years ago, when my insurance changed and I had to find a new audiologist and hearing aid office to get new hearing aids. The person on the other end told me “No there’s no list online and I cannot email then to you, but I can give you the addresses over the phone!”

      My desk got a significantly larger head-shaped dent in it that day.

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      • I do have the Bluetooth hookup and overall, it definitely helps! However, as in the instance I mentioned, every so often, I’ll miss a word or phrase and most often it’s related to the person’s accent. Nine times out of ten if the person speaks “plain” English, the problem doesn’t arise.

        Sorry about your desk. 😄

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  5. Waiting forever, only to deal with a bot, is incredibly annoying Nan, so you have my sympathy there. Sometimes it’s even worse, some companies want you to use their online chat bots, which are woefully ill-equipped to resolve a problem. I want to deal with a human being, not a robot!

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  6. Just thinking about the horror stories I’ve experienced with CS is enough to make me CuSs. It seems we’re living in a civilization which is becoming less civil with each passing year, and it is beyond frustrating we are apparently helpless to do anything about it.

    BTW, the National Do Not Call Registry is a joke. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t get at least five or six spam calls (except Sunday, when I ‘only’ get two or three). If I didn’t have caller ID to expose them as spam so I don’t answer the phone, it would drive me even crazier than I am!

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    • Mistermuse, I’m quite sure that MOST all of the robotic/soliciting calls these days come from overseas, however, since companies like Google sell internet phone numbers for $5–$10 per line, a LOT of foreign companies—contracted to many American marketing firms—make the 200-million phone calls from ghost-to-ghost-to-ghost phone numbers purchased from Google’s inventory of bought-up, sellable phone numbers. At least, that’s my humble, educated guess. 😉

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      • (Just an FYI aside)
        The minute I hear the accent of someone who sounds suspiciously like Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther I know it’s a scammer.
        I just hang up quietly and that’s an end of it. One clue is when a man with a heavy Indian accent introduces himself as “John Wayne” or “Michael Fox” …
        There are people online working to expose and destroy the call centers these guys work at, in India…

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        • Yes, I have a similar anti-spammer, anti-solicitor to AI/bot calls. If the number calling is unrecognizable by my Contacts list—which is pretty limited anyway—then I will NEVER answer. I let those calls go to specifically designed voicemail for bots or solicitors, unless of course the number is already blocked; then I never know they’ve called previously cuz it doesn’t show up at all.

          But my voicemail is intentionally AT LEAST 2.5 TO 3-mins long; much longer if Verizon allowed me a much longer greeting. The intent is to waste as much of the bot’s/solicitor’s time as they want to waste of mine. 🤭 And I explicit explain in my greeting if I know you personally, I apologize to them that I didn’t get to the phone in time. If they are not a close friend or family, then I explicitly tell them that IF the call is critical or an emergency… “LEAVE A MESSAGE.” 9.75 times out of 10, the bot/AI or solicitor never leaves a voicemail. Hence, when I check “Missed Calls,” but there’s no voicemails, the # immediately gets blocked!

          My blocked phone numbers list is today somewhere between 1,200 #’s to 1,400 #’s… I kid you not. And it keeps growing larger and larger. 🤦‍♂️ But what can we do, honestly? 🤷‍♂️

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        • Scammer Payback is hilarious. They literally remotely take over Call Center computers and show the scammers camera shots of the call center interior.

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      • The entertainment value of Mark Rober destroying call centers is amazing. He has such fun doing it. And frankly, I’ve not had a call any scammer in over a year. It’s no coincidence, I m sure.

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    • What’s worse are the ones that come to my work number, which I’m required to answer…because I’m sort of ‘customer support’ for my job (I work in IT for a college, and help desk is one of my myriad duties)

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  7. First is what passes for music to while away the hours while you wait and wait and wait…it’s loud, usually, repetitive, and boring…and every five minutes the canned happyvoice comes back to tell me to hang in there, a representative will be with you shortly…

    Second is the choice of people who answer the phones. Our former health clinic had a Chinese woman with an accent you could have hammered nails with, she was loud, and sounded more like a street seller than a doctor’s phone service. I have no problem with accents or races, but sometimes when I am greeted with ‘how are ya hon’ at the doctor’s office it startles me.

    All the Do Not Call Registry does is warn callers that they are not welcome. I remind the friendly guys from the National Firefighters Association and the National Policemen’s Association about it, and hang up. It does seem to help. the Registry doesn’t prevent calls, it just makes some people a bit more cautious about making them.

    I did learn one easy trick to get to the person you need to speak to: when you first encounter a human online, ask for Billing. Money not only talks, it pays attention. Suddenly you’re talking to a real person. Then you say, ” Oh, Im sorry, I must have been sent to the wrong place.. can you help me?” and just like that, you’re in. =)

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      • it is indeed, Nan. One day I was searching for help in a company, and all I could find was one bored clerk. In frustration I said, Oh, let me talk to billing. And suddenly there I am, with a very happy-to-talk-to-me woman who obviously gets very few visitors…she was more than happy to patch me on through, and I thought, what just happened here…

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  9. I rarely have occasion to contact customer service anywhere, and when I do, I’m usually able to do so online or via email without issue. However, a couple of weeks ago I wanted to cancel my subscription to the local newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer. I emailed them and was told I must do so by phone. I explained that due to hearing problems, I cannot, and was told that I’d have to get someone to do it for me, then. I could easily enough have my daughter or granddaughter do it for me, but it made me angry, so instead I contacted my bank and told them to reject all future payment requests from this vendor. Problem solved. As I said, I don’t deal with many companies or businesses and rarely leave the house, so I’ve been lucky, I guess, not to have the problems of poor customer service. I have a rule, though, when I do call a company for whatever reason … 60 seconds on hold, then I hang up. Life is too short to waste it holding a phone to my ear.

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  10. I like it when you get stuck in an automated phone loop that takes you to the beginning over and over.
    I actually refrain from buying anything that might require me to contact the company. I freakin hate it?

    I like it when you get stuck in an automated phone loop that takes you to the beginning over and over…. Hehe

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  11. I like the way the Apple does their tech support. You can text message them the initial crap and then have them call you. I’ve had a few issues recently with Apple, and although I don’t like what the have to say about my issue at the moment, this system does work well. Now Verizon has something similar that works through Messenger that doesn’t work so well. Either Apple has real people answering texts or their bots are 200% better.

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  12. At the start of the millennium it seemed like every organisation employing more than a handful of staff was outsourcing to offshore call centres, usually to one based on the Indian subcontinent or a low wages southeast Asian nation.

    As many have mentioned, accents proved to be troublesome. However here in Aotearoa, it was somewhat different as most call centre workers learn American or British English, so those are the accents they understand even if their own accents are way off. They struggle with the Kiwi accent, our dialect and idioms. They often had more problems understanding us than we did understanding them. I changed my phone and internet provider specifically so I could speak to someone who could understand me.

    Since the start of covid, things have actually got better. Most businesses have brought their response centres back onshore, but with modern technology, instead of using centralised call centres, employ staff working from home. Occasionally you’ll hear a child or a dog in the background. I’ve asked several of these operators how they find working from home instead of a call centre, and to date all have said it’s a big improvement as they have more flexible hours. One woman I asked said she worked 3 afternoons per week, while a young guy worked full time fitting it around his university lectures.

    Apparently more staff are employed than would be typical at a call centre, but most are not full time, so it’s less expensive for their employers, not to mention savings such as property rental, office equipment, electricity etc. The call operators often have “cheat sheets” to guide them through first level help which resolves most issues, but they can transfer callers to a higher level of support if needed.

    And from my perspective, it’s an improvement as wait times have dropped considerably over recent years (5 minutes is now a rarity, usually around a minute or less), the support personnel seem happier, and I can speak naturally instead of attempting a fake British or American accent and not worry about using idioms that flummox most non-Kiwi speakers.

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  13. What’s worse than an automated reply such as ….
    ” …for fault reporting, press 2″ especially as the 2 button is so worn as to be almost illegible,
    is being forced to listen to up to 20 minutes of Kenny G on a tape loop.( And I kid you not).
    I wouldn’t be surprised if poor old Kenny has to see a therapist knowing how many people his music has either driven insane or induced to jump off a tall building.

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  14. On the opposite side of the coin…
    Whenever we encounter, good service, especially from a business perspective I try to encourage everyone here to write or phone or simply tell the individual in person how much we appreciate what they do.

    To give an example.
    Since COVID a whole new mini industry has sprung up; that of the delivery motorbikes.
    Many of the major supermarkets realised that they were losing tons of business because of lockdowns so they organised fleets of scooters / motorbikes to deliver groceries.
    One chain, Checkers, started with the slogan 60/60.
    Sixty items ( or less) delivered locally with sixty minutes.
    Brilliant idea and with the cost of parking and fuel it is sometimes hardly worth getting the car out the garage. You get pretty much all you need delivered right to your door in under an hour!
    In our experience no other supermarket chain comes close.
    So happy was one of the delivery guys after we told him, how good he was, and rewarded him with a box of cupcakes, he offered to deliver cakes if ever we need!

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    • one of our local box store chains has a setup for delivery to cars in the parking lot. Nice idea, but you need a cell phone and patience. mucho patience. My husband gives them ten minutes to discover he’s out there, then he goes in and picks the stuff up himself. No one seems to man the computers, so what’s the point?

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  15. Everyone had said enough about Customer Service there is not much to add, except these people are not the ones to yell at. Ask for supervisors (once you have the chance), then yell at them.
    But I encountered a new email frustration the other day, and I presume it will catch on. I rec’d an email from a new company, which I automatically hit the “Unsubscribe” button on. Three identical
    emails in two hours made me try. When my browser brought up the Unsubscribe page, it asked if I really wanted to stop the emails. I hit the yes button, and it took me to a page that said I had to log in to unsubscride, then it asked for my username and password. Log in to unsubscribe! I don’t think so. No way i hell! That was when I discovered my “new version” gmail account has made the block sender button impossible to find. I gave up on that, deleted the email, and moved on. I’m getting about 20 emails a day from them, even after reporting them. There’s a scam in there somewhere, and they are hoping to create enough anger to make someone try to log in. But that way lies madness!!!!!

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    • thank you for mentioning the Gmail. My husband wants me to switch over, but I’m being a luddite about this, and after what you just mentioned, I think I’d stick with my old reliable one…

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      • I’ve been on gmail almost from the start. It was revolutionary when it came out. But like all revolutiobaries, it “grew fat and got lazy.” Now it is the establishment. I’m too old to start over again, but i just might anyway…

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    • I’m confused. Your comment makes it sound as though Gmail is the culprit … and I find this difficult to believe as I’ve always had very good results with them. Now I do know that if you use Edge rather than Chrome, the Gmail is loaded as an “app” (I found this out on my other-half’s computer because he uses Edge but wanted to use G-mail). Is this where the problem lies?

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      • I would not touch Edge with a 10-mile pole. I barely ever even use Chrome anymore.
        And I do use the gmail app, and maybe that’s the problem. The last time it updated, all kinds of things changed. The Block Sender button just disappeared. I don’t use it often, but I like to be able to use it. Where has it gone?
        Some of my old emails vanished. I work on a tablet now, and maybe that’s the problem. But I had emails going back years. Now they barely go back a month. Do I have to buy a laptop to find out if they are still available? Desktops just aren’t convenient anymore. I do most of my surfing lying on my bed. That way when I get tired I just roll over and take a nap.
        .

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        • I’ve found my tablet only keeps the emails that I write using it. If I used a laptop or regular computer to send/write the email, it’s only saved on that piece of equipment. Even though you would think you would have access to all emails since you’re using Gmail, for some reason it doesn’t seem to work that way.

          I’m pretty sure that if you go into “Settings” when you’re in Gmail, under Filters and Blocked Addresses, the option to block senders is still available.

          Who do you use if you don’t use Chrome or Edge? Some folks like the way Firefox operates. I used to use it, but went back to Chrome many years ago because it works best for me.

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          • I use the Samsung browser that came with the Android tablet. It works fine for me.
            My emails showed up on all my machines. I had them set to synchronize. Not sure how I did that, but everything was shared. I’m,presuming it still would be, if I had multiple machines.

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  16. Hmm, am I the only person in the world who has had good experiences with customer service? (Well, except for Frontier Communications, the telephone company. But they don’t count because they are owned by Satan’s brother in law) Every time I’ve had to deal with a company’s customer service I’ve had reasonably good experiences. Even with companies that are supposed to be bad at customer service, and that includes Spectrum, my ISP. I had problems, got on line, chatted with someone, and the next day a service tech came in, replaced my modem, installed new wiring all the way out to the pole, the box outside of the house, and within an hour had everything working. And at no charge. Sprint was supposed to have horrible customer service but they always solved all of the problems I had, in one case giving me a couple of months of free service to make up for a problem they caused. Amazon? They’ve fallen over themselves to keep me happy. I bought a very expensive Celestron telescope some years ago and the motor drive tracking system didn’t work. That evening I wrote an email to them, and the next morning the vice president of some department called me at 8 AM to tell me they’d already shipped me a new telescope by FedEx and once I was sure it was working, I could ship the broken one back whenever I got around to it.

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    • Well, you may not be the only person in the world, but I would tend to say you’re in the minority. Only thing I can figure is you must have been “holding your mouth right.” 😁

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  17. I’m on the fence about all this CS attention i’m getting……
    but the absolute worst is when a person goes to a checkout line in any retail operation, with the intention of paying in person, to a person, and the ‘person’ points to a machine, and says ‘you can do it yourself.’

    Uh, sir, ma’am, i’m here to help u keep your job. Service? Hardly.

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    • all this CS attention i’m getting .. HA-HA! (Inside joke.)

      I totally agree with the machine experience. Awhile back I had to pick up a few things at the grocery store and headed for the Fast Lane to check out. As I approached, I noticed it had been closed and new automated machines were sitting in its place! While I don’t mind using them when I only have a couple of items, in this particular instance the machines weren’t even working correctly! A “standby” checker had to come and “fix” it … and then ended up running my items through herself because the machine kept hiccupping. So WHAT did anyone gain by this experience?

      Customer service indeed!

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      • Coming up to the grocery store checkout counters, I saw two open lanes with long lines of people and full carts. The self scanning section had 12 machines with 6 being used. My choice was to either wait in a long line – perhaps 10-15 minutes -or scan my items myself. So, I did it myself. Later that day I came across a report from this grocery chain announcing that 3 out of every 4 customers prefer self self checkout… and so they would be installing even more… to serve their customers even better!

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      • My husband, being the machine/numbers guy, uses the self checkout. When I shop, I prefer to not have to deal with it . I’ve never used it, and don’t really want to. I’m rarely in that much of a hurry anyway. Maybe someday when I’m feeling brave I’ll give it a go. Maybe. =)

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  18. Everything already stated here is pretty much what I would also state. But I would add simply this with regard to modern technology in Customer Service by computer algorithms/AI wasting your first 10-30 mins on the phone OR in the little chat-windows on their (un)helpful websites, depending on how complex or sophisticated your issue is.

    Basically, what these midsize and mega-corporations have done and are doing now to their customer-client base is twofold:

    1) — A posteriori, the biggest expenditure for American corporations is ALWAYS their human employee payroll along with competitive and/or by-law required basic health insurance benefits for each human full-time employee. 20th- and 21st-century ‘streamlined’ business models strongly encourage (demand?) that the highest Executives keep this cost down to a bare skeletal minimum. Voilà! Enter computer bots/AI and cut-out humans.

    2) What the ever evolving bots/AI (frequently) cannot resolve, sometimes at a snails pace… make the human on the other end of the phone call or web chat-session do the company’s/corporation’s job for them… AND NOT GET PAID to do THEIR EFFIN JOB!!! 🤬

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  19. Many British companies use call centres in India. Cheap labour, and they can speak English. Trouble is, they don’t really understand English, so as the caller, I have to keep explaining myself. When a company uses a call centre in England, they get my business.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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      • They also have trouble with our accents. Britain has many regional accents, and that confuses them. (Mine is a ‘harsh’ London accent, often dropping the ‘H’ in words and not sounding the hard ‘T’. For example, Hospital would be Osspiddle’ when I say it. 🙂 )

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  20. One of the flipsides of customer service is that, when you work in a customer-facing environment (as I do), you sometimes face the opposite side of the coin. You end up dealing with customers who will not understand anything, and you know they’re going to be the ones who come back with complaints. Most are understanding that at store level, my powers are limited, but some do get quite snarky, and don’t seem to understand that snark means their query gets put to the bottom of the pile.

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        • It is mostly quite rewarding, as we have the NHS system here. But around 10% of the ‘patients’ feel so entitled, they abuse the low-paid staff instead of complaining through the proper channels. My wife works just 18 hours a week now, (she is 62) but sometimes comes home in tears after having to tolerate swearing, complaints, and personal abuse.

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      • my landlady is a Nurse Practitioner for a county health office. in addition to dealing with the bureaucratic nature of her agency, customer service too often involves taking abuse from dru addicts demanding narcotics.😩

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      • There are also entirely too many people in this world who refuse to listen to someone “foreign” sounding, or they’re hard of hearing but refuse to acknowledge it…how much easier to blame the other guy for your shortcomings.

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  21. I hate all those in customer service who don’t immediately recognize me as their “Lord” or “God”. It truly aggravates me that so few in the service industry recognize my supreme power and god-like status over them. I’ve worked for years convincing myself I’m God and better than everyone else, and, gosh dammit, it truly pisses me off when my subordinate humans don’t recognize my godliness!!! 🙂

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  22. I miss the old days when the elderly phone answerer at the local power company would ask you how you was doin’, and what could he do for you? I swear you could almost smell the pipe smoke and see his suspenders and the four day growth of beard. Now we get cranky auto calls. Progress is highly overrated.

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  23. Luckily I haven’t had much problem and prefer to work it on online without a human if possible. I do like the ones that will take your number and call you back and they do.
    My online banking experience is much better than my local bank where they have one person to handle specific problems and there’s always a wait.
    Some stores are very understaffed and that’s the fault of the store not the poor people who are taking the brunt and for what pay I can only imagine.

    I also much prefer self checkout.

    It’s a sign of the times…

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  24. When you think about it, between computers, call centers, automatic tellers, and self-checkouts, we are slowly, cheerfully, distancing ourselves from other people. I’m probably the only one I know who doesn’t have or use a cell phone. (well, I did, but my husband permanently borrowed it one day…) We’ve forgotten how to interact with reality, in many ways.

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