Posted by noa on October 19, 2000, at 15:55:53
In reply to Funny (?) hate letter, posted by laural on October 19, 2000, at 7:44:12
LOVE IT.
I recently had a similar experience with my local AND long distance companies--7 calls over a two hour period, shuffled from one person to the next, disconnected, unable to get them to talk to each other about why the long distance was not in effect, etc. Afterward, I thought I might send them a bill for my time!!! It is what I call "TELEMISCOMMUNICATION" and "CUSTOMER DISsERVICE".
My celphone company also keeps me on hold over an hour with that ridiculous tape saying how much they value my business and how important I am etc. It is easy to say things like that, but I would like them to act it.
I am especially irked at the cellphone companies because they are constantly doing big promotions to sign up more and more customers but the services gets worse and worse. Every Friday afternoon, for example, for about 2-4 hours, it is impossible to make or receive any calls because "the network is busy". When I finally reached customer disservice, I complained about it and the response was "well I guess you live in a busy area". That is correct, but it seems unacceptable to me to be bringing in more customers if you cannot properly serve the existing ones.
I know that the economy and low unemployment adds to the erosion of good customer service (have you asked questions about products in stores lately only to get that blank stare and the "I don't know", which, by the way, is a much better answer than the frequent make-it-up-just-to-shut-the-customer-up kind of answer). However, I think there has been a definite abandonment of the VALUE of good service by the companies, a neglect of good training. This attention to good service seemed to be a trend in the eighties and early nineties, and I wondered what happened to that trend? Is it that in a good economy the companies know people are going to spend money anyway? It bothers me a lot.
Laural, all of this is not to overlook my particular irritation at insurance companies and so called "managed care"---really it is "managed cost" (not my own idea, I learned this from the Coalition for Mental Health Consumers and Professionals (www.nomanagedcare.com).
So, thanks for sharing that letter. It was great.
poster:noa
thread:984
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20001011/msgs/1318.html