Devil's Advocate: Why poor customer service is all too common
It's not because of offshoring...
The reason so many of us have bad experiences with customer service has little to do with the fact so many companies are outsourcing it, says Martin Brampton. There are bigger issues at play here.BT lambasting its customers for racial prejudice over Indian call centres makes a good story. It also distracts from the real issue about customer service, which is that in most cases it is not working. The whole question of how large organisations interface with their customers needs an overhaul.
Dissatisfaction is rife and the spread of large company attitudes into the public sector is alarming. Government is seemingly unable to grasp the point that much of the commercial sector is steadily debasing its reputation with its own customers.
The fundamental problem, as we all know, is that for all the talk of the supremacy of the customer, most large companies want to take the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of deliverable. And customer service fails because it has little connection with achieving that minimum amount of deliverable.
For the most part, people do not contact organisations such as BT until there is a problem or a question. We are then forced to deal with a group that is clearly at arm's length from the functional areas of the organisation. The geographic separation of outsourced 'service' centres only emphasises the operational detachment that affects even UK-based centres. In the specific case of BT, only a minority of employees seem to understand the company's service offerings.
Recently, I have been having problems with an exceedingly large UK retailer that operates a supermarket chain. We used to have groceries delivered and enjoyed a good service until the retailer decided to rejig its operation and base our service on a different store. The service level plummeted. No amount of complaining made the slightest difference, most probably because there is next to no communication between customer services and the operational departments.
A couple of weeks ago, the delivery arrived early, which was acceptable but the usual printout showing missing and substituted items was not available. We were told the store's printer had failed. That seemed remarkable, as our family is better resourced than to rely on just one printer. Worse, after the driver had gone, it became apparent that several items on the till receipt were missing.
A call to customer service brought a promise of a return call. None came. Another call, and we were told there was no record of our previous call. But we were assured that customer service was taken extremely seriously and that the missing items would be refunded. We would receive an email in confirmation. No email ever arrived, nor did a refund.
A letter to customer services elicited an arrogant letter that said that we had cancelled the only order placed on the day in question. The letter implied that we, as mere customers, were obviously in a muddle. It told us that there was no record of either of our two calls - nor of any refund. The writer said that he "felt" that the 0845 numbers for stores that we had grumbled about were cheaper for many customers, when in fact they are never cheaper than any UK geographic number for anyone.
Another letter from us provided documentary evidence for our claims. All we received in reply was a very curt letter telling us that our views had been recorded. Fortunately, we still have the choice of other retailers and will be exercising that choice.
In the light of this kind of experience, it is frustrating to hear government ministers talking about the introduction of private companies into the health service. They suggest that only the most doctrinaire could be opposed to such an enlightened move, since the delivery of care will remain free. Yet this completely misses the point. Quite often, money is not the critical part of a 'customer service' issue. And I do not want my health to be at the mercy of the kind of people who think that an answer to my problem is to be told that my views have been recorded.
Maybe customers' issues do have to be filtered by something like call centre operators. But real concerns do arise, and the world is a messy place where problems often fail to fit neatly into standard scripts. Until the operational parts of organisations find ways to deal with customer problems, our frustrations will only get worse, and call centre operators will be subjected to irrational abuse.