Some recent bad experiences
My area of experience is creativity and alternative thinking, not customer service. However, I was inspired (or perhaps driven) to put pen to paper after recent experiences with several large organisations here in the UK. I will not name them directly but the two worst offenders provide my telephone and banking services.
Large organisations just want to give us what they think we want. They might be so arrogant as to be saying “this is what you are going to get”. Recently I wanted answers to some questions regarding banking. I checked the company’s website for possible answers. After determining that the answers were not there I used the secure messaging system to ask my questions. I did this 4 times and each time the reply was a section of the help text from their website that had been cut and pasted into the response that had been sent to me.
When trying to contact my telephone company I tried 5 times via telephone and their chat service to resolve an issue. Each time I was told what they thought I wanted to hear i.e. you will get xxx within 14 days. They seemed to see themselves as an information service. I was being told how the system should behave. Exceptions were things that they seemed unable to deal with.
What can be done?
In most cases it is not actually the fault of the individuals providing the service. It is the actual system that needs revamping. Use a little creative thinking guys. Ask why I might be emailing or calling you. It is usually because my query is technical or non standard. I want some real help. So why employ knowledgeable people as supervisors rather than let them answer the phone. Just think, if you answered your queries the first time, you would ultimately cut down the number of calls to your call centres.