Who says good service is dead?

There are many theories as to why, with all of the advances made in providing better customer service, so many customers in fact feel that they are receiving less service.

1. Tier service offerings
2. Automated voice systems
3. Less support personnel per customer
4. Less skilled personnel

These are but a few of the many theories that abound, and unfortunately they are all true. Not just one or two, but all of the theories combine to make a poor experience for many customers.

There is nothing wrong with a tiered service offering, provided it has been adequately communicated to the customer as to what they are receiving. At this same time, how can a company turn its back on a customer who really has no clue on the next step they should take? By going the little extra mile to assist the customer will direction, superior customer service is rendered.

Whoever came up with the automated voice system should be strung up. No one likes these and supposedly good companies have surprisingly bad systems in place. For example, I have been fighting with Wal-mart for the last 6 weeks over when a mattress I ordered would be delivered. I have had to resort to email communication because I simply can't seem to get a live person on the phone. No matter what number I press, I always receive the same message that their online support will provide me with answers. If you want to win customers, lose the automated voice system, or at least keep it to a bare minimum with very easy escape routes to a live person for those customers that just can't wait.

I know that times are tough, but tough times are also the best times for a company to scoop up a huge market share of customers by providing the extras that the other companies are dropping off their offerings. A company that I work for has been bouncing this issue around for some time now and I keep hoping that they will wake up and realize we need more support personnel. When I started at the company, we had twice as many reps as they do now, and I am pretty sure we had fewer calls. The company did hire someone as a call coordinator, so customers would not have to wait to talk to a person, but unfortunately it is not helping matters. Customers are still not getting their problems resolved in what they consider to be a timely manner. The key here is "what they consider to be a timely manner". If a company wants to win customers, then said company must cater to the customers' needs.

Less skilled personnel - this is perhaps the bane of the entire industry. Why is it that a group of people that are required to know so much, and do so much, are paid so little? In the company that I work for, the support group must know a lot of every job in the company from programming to project manager to sales, but they get paid less than any of them. A company gets what it pays for, and in this case, that tends to be less skilled employees. Even hiring someone with fewer skills and then training them has its cons when pay is not sufficient. A trained employee is no longer unskilled and thus can usually find higher paying job elsewhere that actually requires less work.

Thankfully all of these issues can be resolved by a few basic steps:

1. Listen to what the customer wants - then do it
2. Take care of your internal customers - provide them with adequate pay and training
3. Ensure that management does more than pay lip-service to both internal and external customers

Just remember:

Happy employee = happy customer = profits