Customer service officers, aren’t they supposed to make us happy?
Have you ever tried calling Maybank or TMnet Streamyx’s customer service hotline? If yes, then you should know how many “layers” or “numbers” (press “1″ for service A, press “2″ for service B, etc) do you have to press in order to get to the “real” customer service officer. To me, this is pure nonsense. The existence of customer service is to make customers happy but everywhere we see and hear, these customer service officers are actually making the customers more frustrated.
There are also those that say “Hello, please hold on” and make you wait forever, and those that never bother to answer. For example, on Thursday, I called ING’s hotline and it was engaged all the time. What’s the purpose of having the number when nobody can get through? In my opinion, that’s a very lousy customer service…or should I say…it’s even worse than those businesses without customer service.
Here’s my suggestion, rather than forcing the customers to go through all the “walls” in order to make them give up….maybe the businesses should remove all those “walls”, and assign the customer service officer to talk directly to the customers. Most customers just want to complain and need people to listen…and if possible, help them to fix the problem. Furthermore, having a real person behind the phone is much more sincere than using a machine.
If you cannot do something as simple as that, then don’t even try to start a customer service number. Just remove it altogether. It will save you a lot of $$ and avoid making your customers feeling even more frustrated.
p/s… I have a feeling that I’ve written something related to this before. Hahha. But…don’t care lah =_=
You can try find the company website for the IVR. That way, you don’t hv to waste time listening to the (confusing/long) options.
PASIM
30 Nov 08 at 3:39 pm
@ PASIM
What’s IVR? And what if I don’t have access to Internet?
Alvin Lim
30 Nov 08 at 5:04 pm
sigh, this kind of sesrvice, every where bah… that day i called o2′s customer service helpline or something, i mentioned something stated in my bill, however, that girl told me that ‘i’m sorry, i do not know what is redemption value bla bla bla…” *** speechless ***
at last, i went to carphone warehouse settle my bill…>.<
sugarbabys last blog post..Cash Advance Places
sugarbaby
1 Dec 08 at 9:10 am
@ sugarbaby
O2′s service is quite famous 1. Last time I used Vodafone…still okay, except that the cust service officer i talked to was an Irish lady with very heavy Irish accent. =_= Chicken and duck talk.
Alvin Lim
1 Dec 08 at 9:15 am
well, this was not about chicken and duck talk, this was about tht girl did not know about the computer’s package or thing, i did complaint to that carphonewarehouse’s manager, he also felt that girl was knuckleheaded….HA HA HA..anyway, am going back, so, free to meet then?
sugarbabys last blog post..Cash Advance Places
sugarbaby
1 Dec 08 at 9:34 am
An IVR is an interactive voice response system. Press 1 for English, 2 for Chinese, etc. You can’t access IVRs from a website. You might find the co’s general line but most times they will transfer you back to square one.
I’ve said this on another blog before. Why do people call customer service? Because a product or service had failed them in some way. But companies have it backwards. To solve this, they increase the no. of cust service agents when the more permanent (and cheaper) solution is to get rid of their product issues. If the product is perfect, I guanratee their support call centers will be silent.
But since that’s not happening and they insist on making bad products and spending money on their call centers, then they might as well do it right, which is maybe to hire 1 support agent for every 10 customers they have out there. For ING, would that work out to maybe 30,000 staff just for Malaysia? Good for the economy eh.
Damien Tan
1 Dec 08 at 11:58 am
@ sugarbaby
Carphonewarehouse is quite okay 1 – pretty friendly. After all, they are quite independent…they sell services for all telcos. So it’s fine if they bomb the O2.
@ Damien
A simple example is the laptop companies DELL vs Fujitsu. DELL is quite affordable and the service is very good. Fujitsu is very expensive and their customer service is…well…do they even have one in Malaysia? I was worried about this few years ago, when I was planning to get myself a laptop. My friend raised an interesting question.
“Why do they need a good customer service, if their product is very good and problem free?”
True, very true indeed. In the end, my Fujitsu laptop last 5 years and is still in very good condition, whereas my friends who bought DELL laptops have been calling up the customer service officers countless times.
So, conclusion.
Fix your product and people will not find problem with you.
If you really can’t, then start an efficient and useful customer
service department to let the customers vent their anger on you.
And if you cannot do that, then either stop selling that product, close that customer service department, or just close your business down. Stop wasting money and stop wasting customers’ time.
Alvin Lim
1 Dec 08 at 3:17 pm