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Does BP understand Customer Service

According to Jamier L. Scott in Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective, “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation." Its importance varies by product, industry and customer; defective or broken merchandise can be exchanged, often only with a receipt and within a specified time frame.

Some have argued that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation. How true considering the problems that BP has been experiencing since April 20th..

According to consumerist.com, BP service reps have had their hands full since the oil disaster.

"Janice," not her actual name, has been working in the BP Call Center in Houston, answering calls about the disaster from all over the world, and she says she and her coworkers don't think the calls are being sent any higher up in the company. "We’re a diversion to stop them from really getting to the corporate office, to the big people. I don't want to get emotional, but it's so frustrating when these people live right there [in the Gulf Coast] and nothing is being done to help them." There are about one hundred people taking these calls on a special 800 number.

Janice also says that sometimes call center employees don't even write anything down, or just write "Blah blah blah," because they don't think the calls are being sent anywhere. KHOU TV in Houston reported the story, and asked BP for a response. Company officials said that they've logged 200k calls so far, and that they searched for "blah" in their database of call notes and only found one instance.

watch the interview: http://www.khou.com/home/BP-operator-says-calls-fall-on-deaf-ears-96259454.html

Had a disaster like this happened in the Bay Area, I am sure any major company would have done things differently and not have their big kahuna taking off on a glitzy cruise.

It's tough being in a job like this talking to angry people all day. If you don't sympathize with your customers, you're not doing your job and you can make things worse. If you do sympathize, you end up frustrated with not being able to fix the issues at hand and just pass the buck upward. Hopefully, that buck stops somewhere and these inquiries are answered..

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