DECEMBER 6, 2006

       What happened with the days of, “Thank you very much, sir” and “It’s a pleasure doing business with you”?

       Now, I often wonder if customer service agents are trained in verbal attacks.  I almost feel like I need a self defence class before I deal with one of these representatives.  Many companies train staff to be courteous and polite, often using the term, “Treat people the way you’d like to be treated.”  But sometimes it seems these people get too personal and talk to me like I’m one of their peers.

       There’s one company I dealt with that constantly has problems with the service it provides.  Very often there’s a long wait to get someone over there on the phone.  And when you do they are less than receptive to hear your questions or complaints.  I understand that I’m not their first call of the day about the same issue and that it probably does get annoying to hear the same thing from people over and over again, but that’s your job!

       Do you think the majority of people calling the technical support line will be praising your hard work and great service?  We know that rarely happens.

       But to ask lots of questions and find out what is happening is my job as a customer.  I’m paying for a service or product so it’s essentially my right to know when service will be restored or when everything will be operational again.  However, I will even settle for a bit of insight as to what the problem is if ETAs can’t be provided.

       The response, “I don’t know what’s wrong” just doesn’t work for me.  And don’t even think about asking to speak with someone who does know (read: a higher-up in the organization) because that seems to be a threat to the call-taker and the customer needs to put on battle gear for the next round.

       “If you don’t like it, cancel your service then,” I’m told.  I pause to make sure I heard that correctly.  I asked if I was just told to take my business elsewhere.  Yes, I did hear it correctly and that’s what the person said.  So you know what, that’s just what I did.  But not before finding the contact information for the higher-ups.  I wanted to speak to and question them about their customer service policies.  And I think I reached the person who trained the staff because he didn’t see a problem with losing a long-term customer who’d done business with the company for years.

       It really makes you wonder if these days it’s about the quality of service provided or the number of customers – satisfied or not -- a company can brag about having.