How can we improve customer service?

A month or more ago we posted a video from a Saturday Night Live skit. It expressed the frustration of so many at what we used to call customer “service.” There was a time when you could count on talking to a live person about a product you had purchased and get your complaints resolved. These days, customer service agents are located halfway across the world, sometimes with little ability to solve your problem on their own.  There is even talk about replacing customer service agents with Artificial Intelligence and robots.

Don’t get me wrong. The many customer service agents from the Philippines or India are often quite amazing. Their English is sometimes better than ours, and they often will engage about where they are and how they feel about your problem.  But the majority of these agents may not be employees with benefits or the ability to call on supervisors to help solve a more complicated issue. And they must work according to strict policies that are more focused on profit than customer needs.

Years ago when I was buying shoes online through Zappos, my mail delivery person dubbed me the “Imelda of Santa Cruz” for the many boxes he delivered or picked up for returns.  Zappos was one of the first online sellers to seriously emphasize customer service, both in terms of the way they treated customers who called for help and their offer to ship and return shoes free of charge. I used their customer service line several times and was never disappointed.  Amazon bought Zappos in 2009 and I have not really used them much since then, so I can’t speak to whether or not their customer service is still as friendly as it used to be. Their CEO, Tony Hsieh, was self-described “weird” and he died in 2020 after stepping down as CEO after struggling with a number of different physical and mental health issues.  Nevertheless, Zappos created a company culture that valued customer service, and in my view, few companies have been able to replicate that.  In the past month I have interacted with Amazon’s customer service and have been amazed at how responsive it has been. So maybe Amazon did learn something from Zappos!

When the Saturday Night Live video was posted on our site, it received more hits than many other posts we had shared. That persuaded me that our website visitors represent a very large group of people that are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”  ( 1976 movie “Network”). The pandemic made us dependent on online buying, and the experiences we have had with trying to return items has not always been pleasant.

Customer service in health care is also not in very good shape. The first line of defense for an insurance company is the agent who answers the customer service call (once you have pressed 1 or 2 or whatever). That person works with a script, and unless you demand to talk to a supervisor, you may not get your problem resolved. When you visit a doctor in person, you usually need to stand at the counter and wait for someone to notice you. What questions do office personnel ask you when you come to the window? Nothing about how you feel or are doing — they first and foremost ask you for your insurance cards and DOB. Wouldn’t it be astounding if you walked into a doctor’s office and they greeted you with a smile (ok behind the glass and with a mask, but still….) and actually recognized that you ARE the customer? You really do pay their salary. That concept too often gets lost in the process.

How can we improve customer service? When there are choices as to what we buy and how we buy it, it is now relatively easy to switch to another vendor when we have trouble with a product. Amazon offers thousands of customer reviews for each product they sell, and I always read as many of these reviews as I can to make my choice.  Ebay offers ratings for the seller that can help you decide if you want to use that person or someone else.  Drivers for Lyft and Uber are obsessive about getting five stars for their service, and when you give a 1 or a 2 because the service was really bad, it has the potential to change driver behavior. I say “potential” because it can backfire too, causing drivers to avoid you as a customer!

There are a few things companies could do to earn and keep my business: 1) Have real people answer the phone right away and eliminate the need to press 1,2,3,etc to get to the right place; 2) Don’t force the caller to say “agent” over and over to get past the automated choices; 3) Empower the customer service person to solve your problem and believe that you are acting in good faith (there may be some who take advantage of this, but the majority of us would not); 4) Compensate customer service agents, not on the basis of how many calls they can get through in an hour but how well they resolve your issues; 5) Eliminate the ubiquitous “surveys” to ask you how well they did to resolve your problem. (Does anyone pay attention to these surveys?) 6) Treat us as real “customers” who can refuse to buy their product if they don’t treat us in a respectful manner.

Improvement in customer service starts with us. We have a responsibility to be civil and not be angry.  Anger does not produce a good response from anyone. Be aware that the people answering the phone may be having a very bad day, answering call after call from people who do not treat them in a humane way. Think about their work environment — call centers with hundreds of people , underpaid and dealing with problems all day long. Compliment the customer service agent when they try to solve your problem. Thank them! Let them know we understand they can’t do miracles if our problem is basically unsolvable.  I will often start with something like “what can you do to help me?”  That one question puts the responsibility back on the agent to do just that — help you. And finally, when customer service is bad or the hold time is just way too long, do take that survey.  And find another company to sell you the product. Nothing changes behavior like walking away!

What are your ideas for improving customer service?