Skip to main content

Real Customer Service Is Dead

The days of being helped with a single phone call are long gone. Companies nowadays are too big and have too many departments to help the average caller. First of all, the turnover rate is high in this job sector. You could be talking to someone who is just out of training and who knows if they are in the USA or overseas. When a rep puts you on hold for no apparent reason they most likely are asking someone for help. There is also too much pressure on agents or reps to "fix" the reason for the call right away. They are being checked for everything from time of call, what they say, (following scripts of course) and over a dozen different numbers regarding the length of the call. In other words they are treated as a number by the organization. A robot, droid or a voice on a machine. I remember being at Webvan in 2000 when they felt they would need maybe a dozen or so agents to staff the CS Center and that people would find answers online or through the IVR menu. Well....they had over 250 people in their center.Agents also are taking back to back to back calls with no time to really catch your breath and regroup. Will it ever change?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AOL buying Huffington Post

Internet company AOL Inc. famous for it "you've got mail," and local patch news sites is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bet on the future of online news. Huffington Post grew quickly from startup to online giant. Over time, it launched city-specific pages and developed a roster of sections such as food and books. The work of its 70-person paid staff is augmented by content from news outlets and 6,000 bloggers who write for free. In a blog post about the deal, Arianna Huffington praised AOL's vision. She wrote that the deal was signed at the Super Bowl in Dallas.
Post a Comment
Read more

Feels like temperature and customer service phrases

While watching the weather report on television the other day I saw a fairly new phrase: the feels like temperature. Now walking outside I could say it "feels like 80." Someone next to me may say it feels like 65 to them. Another could say it must be at least 90. The exact meaning of a sentence or phrase is sometimes curious, especially in the world of customer service. Have you ever been told by an agent, I need to put you on hold for a minute. Meanwhile a real time of five minutes has passed and still no agent back on the line. You have have walked into a place to eat and the waiter may say, I'll have your table cleaned up in a second. One thousand one, one thousand two. Over two minutes later, it's still being cleaned. An interesting phrase when buying online is days before your item gets to you. Lots of places now may give themselves a big cushion, like 4-14 days delivery. Of course, a common one in retail when checking out is, "find everything you wanted ?
Post a Comment
Read more

On National Merchandising Corporation

I worked for them in 1977, selling advertising. I won a trip to Boston as the volume leader in my training class. Some great people there. The owner Art Sells, (great name), Bill Zollo (great trainer), Roger Liss (my manager), Rick Rathfon (in my training class) and Tom Volkar (great salesperson).
Post a Comment
Read more