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With the world becoming so connected, has the art of customer service been lost? Are we as consumers expected to do all of the leg work when we decide we want to spend our hard earned money on something? Since seemingly all of the answers to our questions about price, quality, availability etc. can probably be answered on-line with a search, should there be any reason to expect people to want to help us anymore? I want to explore these questions and see if customer service is indeed, a dying art.
In the high-tech world, sometimes we still need to speak to someone. It seems like now, when we call a business, the first thing we get is an automated directory. Sometimes, this lets us choose who we want to speak to, just continues on with automated messages, or leaves us on hold until we get frustrated and hang-up. This does not happen all of the time, sometimes we do get to speak to somebody, this has been known to lead to the situation of telling someone what you want or what your problem is only to find out that the person has to pass the call on to somebody else that needs to have it explained again, from the beginning. From a customer’s point of view, this is very frustrating.
When we purchase things, eventually something will break or there will be parts that are missing. This will inevitably lead to complaints, because we are not getting exactly what we paid for. Nobody likes to hear complaints, and unfortunately complaints seem to trigger a defensive mechanism in some people, implying that the customer thinks that the person is personally responsible for the problem. People just want to have their complaints heard and have a solution presented to them. When a solution is acceptable to a customer, there needs to be follow up to make sure that the solution actually makes it to the customer. Reliability is a key to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception. If you say, “Your replacement will be delivered on Friday”, make sure it arrives on Friday. Thought should be given to any promise because nothing is more infuriating to customers more than a broken one.
There also seems to be a lack of trained people in retail establishments today. We can all relate to asking for help only to hear, “I don’t know, this is not my department”. Or you may have run into “have you checked over there?” instead of having them lead you to the item, wait and see if he has questions about it, or if you need anything else. Whatever the extra step may be, we as customers will notice if employees take it. It is getting harder and harder to find someone that loves what they sell and are passionate about it. We all expect knowledgeable employees that are happy to help us find what we need.
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