What Ever Happened to Customer Service?

By definition, Customer Service means "Assistance and other resources that a company provides to the people who buy or use its products or services." Okay, so, everything you have on your body, at your desk, in your office, around your workplace, has some kind of Customer Service attached to it at one end or even both. You can begin to scour the internet looking for information on Customer Service. In a matter of minutes you will start to find links to hundreds of documents such as, Case Studies, Surveys, text logged conversations, recorded phone calls(both good and bad), and everything else to do with the profession of Customer Service. In fact, Customer Service is at Restaurants, Bars, Food Stands, Paper Vendors, and even the Paper Boy is required to have some form of Customer Service skills.

As a customer/consumer we typically expect a valuable and worthwhile Customer Service experience. A customer/consumer is the Customer Service Representative's (CSR) biggest asset for things like external advertising, or what most people call, word of mouth. I served three years working Customer Service for an outsourcing company who provided outsourcing services for other large and smaller IT companies. One of the first things I was taught in my two week training class was that one bad experience got told to ten other people as apposed to ten good experiences that only got told to one person each. When the subject comes up, we are fast to talk about how bad our experience was to hopefully in turn save the person next to us from the same experience.

Customer Service in any organization will not necessarily be 100% satisfactory all the time for everyone. There are numerous studies and documents that prove this. In today's world, Customer Service organizations span literally across the World. It's easy to get caught up in the fiasco of discovering good and bad Customer Service. I remember becoming more annoyed at the lack of what most would call "good" Customer Service by talking to three or four different people just to get what I needed done. By the time I was done, in most cases, I was either no longer annoyed by my original issue out of frustration with my level of support, or I was thinking about who I was going to tell this bad experience to. In most cases it was both.

One of benefits of working in the Customer Service industry is that you get to learn and understand the dos and don'ts of it. Such as, do not ever use the words, Can't and Don't (I can't do that or I don't know that answer.) Through the Customer Service industry you will encounter the types of CSR's that can't, won't, or don't, want to do something for you. One of the last things as a customer/consumer we want is for a CSR tell us they can't, won't, or don't want to help us for one reason or another.

In most cases CSR's are following internal processes that have been designed and created specifically for that kind of business structure they are representing. As a customer/consumer, it is not your issue to care about or understand all those internal processes typically called "red tape." When something isn't going according to process, generally the CSR is quick to let the consumer know. This leads us, the consumer, into a frustration mode because we want someone to listen and do what we want, when we want, to get the problem fixed no matter what has to be done to fix it. It's easier for seasoned CSR's to understand that rather then say, someone with no previous Customer Service experience.

So, how do you find Customer Service? Perhaps the question should be how do you find "good" Customer Service? Simple, do your research. You need to find a good value product from a company that has a reputation for good product support and A+ Customer Service. You need to find out if you're getting a good value for the product and also find out what kind of support is to be expected. Here are some simple things you can ask yourself to help you along on your journey;

Is it a large or a small company?
Regardless of this, your experience will differ with each. Other factors are employee count, and Customer Service call volumes and response times.

Is the product something that has a global presence?
If the product has a global presence, then you can bet the Customer Service, Technical Support, and Sales force are all on a global structure. Expect a large number of employees in each of these areas and through the whole company.

Is the product manufactured and produced with quality in mind?
Does the company manufacture quantity or quality? In most cases, one of the determining factors of this will be the size of the company and if they have the ability or not to turn large amounts of product.

Look at the product line history?
How far back does the product go, is it fiver generations old? Or is it new technology? Sometimes older hardware is already proven with existing situations. Often, new hardware technology is for the bleeding edge people that want the latest and greatest and can sometimes be difficult to support resulting in poorer Customer Service for the consumer.

What is the company's reputation via word of mouth?
Perhaps, this is one of the most important. Talk to other friends, family, neighbors, etc Find out their opinions about a company or a product. Word of mouth is truly the best advertising for a company, which also goes for its Customer Service. If a friend or relative don't think highly of something, you tend to find out fast. Use that to your advantage!

If you would like to better yourself with your own Customer Service skills, or know someone who would like to, there are several good resources available through a simple search on the internet. For instance, http://www.customerservicemanager.com is chalk full of nothing but articles, forums, jobs, magazines and a lot of other stuff all Customer Service related. Another similar site is http://www.customerservicegroup.com which also has various articles and other material all relating to the profession of Customer Service.

So it's true that "good" Customer Service is still able to be found. Unfortunately with larger "Named" companies, the experiences are quick to get around from person to person. The fact remains that Customer Service experiences will vary from person to person as much as they do from company to company. After reading this article, I hope you will be in a better position to gain the knowledge needed to find that valuable Customer Service experience that you may be looking for.