Dixon discovers that good customer service isn’t so difficult, even if the products in question are questionable.
We’re in a service industry, or so we’re told. How we present to clients, and how we deal with their inquiries and – yes, occasionally – complaints is critical to the success of the business.
I reckon we’re going OK. Threats of physical violence have declined year-on-year (I put this down to the improving economy) and we’re getting few complaints by phone and by letter. Keep smiling, remain polite, and treat each customer with respect – that’s the mantra. And for the most part, it works.
Other industries must surely face the same problems and the same challenges when it comes to dealing with customers. I’m a consumer of other companies’ products and services, so I put three of them to the test.
The first one was a simple service call to a printer manufacturer to book a service for a printer that has started forgetting what size paper it is printing on, and sometimes prints single documents over multiple sheets of A4.
I left my details, was told I’d be called back after 9am, and moved onto the morning’s next issue: a call to the customer service department of a mobile telco.
There was a lot of keypad work and repeating phone numbers into the voice recognition system, and eventually I was given the option of being called back “in three to six minutes from now”. I took that option and waited, and used the time to look up the contact details for the third call I was going to make.
The telco call back came in less than three minutes. But I was talking to the wrong department. That could have been my fault; but the voice recognition system had decided for me who I should be talking to. I was on hold for two minutes. A five-minute chat resulted in my phone bill being cut by $24 a month, and the prospect of an upgrade to the iPhone 5 later in the year. Result!
While this was happening, the printer people called back – 12 minutes early – and left a message. When I rang back and spoke to a technician, he referred me to what I assume is an independent servicing contractor, and I was told I’d be called back within two hours.
The third customer service call was to a pay-TV company. This one is usually a doozy. I’m on such an old plan that their systems no longer recognise it; I have one stand-alone channel and a magazine subscription that I want to cancel, but I can’t do either of those things without the system wanting to update me to their current package structure, which will increase my monthly bill by 20 per cent – a bizarre situation when it costs more to receive less.
Despite the stubbornness of the operator’s “system”, and its total inability to help in any way whatsoever, the service itself was fine. The operator kept smiling (or at least I imagined she was), remained polite, and treated my inquiry with respect – even though I called specifically because I want to pay her employer less than I am doing now. The only glitch was when she tried to transfer me to a customer satisfaction survey but hung up on me.
Nevertheless, I was one from two at this stage, and feeling good. But that was about to change. I awaited the printer service call back.
The economics of printers leaves me a bit bemused. So when – after four hours – the service call came, I wasn’t completely surprised to learn that the call-out fee of $99 and the parts estimate of $350 added up to more than the printer cost to start with. It is the second printer from this manufacturer that has broken down. I don’t want to name names [It’s Konica Minolta, isn’t it? – Ed] and I’m over it. I can’t bring myself to throw away ANOTHER printer. Apart from anything else, it’s physically difficult to dispose of a printer, so I suppose I’ll pay $450 to repair something that only cost that much to buy in the first place.
While it was customer service that I set out to talk about, this final experience is a salutary lesson. It doesn’t matter how good your customer service is, if your product is a turkey, your product is a turkey. No amount of being nice about it can change that fact. And ultimately, if you’re selling rubbish then your customers owe you absolutely no loyalty at all.
Dixon Bainbridge can be contacted on info@professionalplanner.com.au or via the Professional Planner HUB. He’ll be writing all correspondence by hand until he gets his printer fixed.
