In the world of fast communications & information technology, customer service is out the window. Whether you are an internal employee or a customer who is asking for service on a product line, you have probably hit the brick wall of customer service hard. One of any company?s largest costs is customer services activities, which now is the definition of a company. Many of the cable companies now have a hard time with customer service because of lost work orders, contractors, and other professionals that point the finger at the other person rather than getting the task done.
In fact, some companies have learned a term that in customer?s eyes is a poor excuse for customer service. That term is ?Out of Scope.? A developer who has a system as their primary system and a secondary system for development, for example, finds out that he can call in his primary desktop for service, but the secondary desktop, even if it has the same operating system is considered out of scope. And the customer service representatives make it abundantly and abruptly clear that they are out of scope.
At the Cable and Telephone company level, it is generally a matter of years of miscommunication that continues to this day. Systems that are supposed to be in use to schedule service as well as ensure customer satisfaction has become part of the cost cutting measures, with that, many of the customers internal and/or external are alienated. A disconnect that measures the size of the continental rift has occurred where a customer calls in and the overpaid script readers are giving general non-descriptive and non-helpful assistance.
SunCom, one of the nations more aggressively marketed cellular phone companies has a saying for no-nonsense. ?Why is it that a $39.95 plan for wireless companies cost you $46?? Harry Connick Jr. asks of the audience. However, with their plans, they have been sued over and over again about hidden charges. So now you see the disconnect. What the companies market the item for in its capabilities, and what actually is done.
Customer complaints have grown over the last several years, so much that it has become apparent that the focus on companies is to gather new customers rather than to ensure the satisfaction of the old. The fact of the matter is that angry customers can be a death sentence to new products and services. When a customer is rubbed the wrong way, the tend to tell their friends and family and nearly everyone around them about how bad the service actually was. In fact, since most if not all companies tie their customer satisfaction rates to their financial bottom line, it continually has been cut.
According to the Washington Post article by Yuki Noguchi, Claes Fornell, a University of Michigan Professor states: ?They just don?t have much sense of how to keep customers satisfied? When consumers have no choice, (and) when they can?t penalize companies for bad service, there?s no incentive for the supplier to improve service.?
Has the Information Technology sector fallen victim to stupidity such as ignoring customers because we lock them into contracts? If so, we wonder why there is so much change in the industry when a multi-million dollar contract is lost.