What To Do When Customer Service Fails

Most companies care about their customers.  Without them a business is “out of business.” The motive to care is really related to survival. Mo matter how hard you try to please 100% of your customers it is not always possible.  What does your company do when caring isn’t enough?

A recent survey placed Comcast customer service near the bottom of the list. Many online stories cover at least one side of the story when it comes to the wrong way to do customer service. Not all customers are created equal, but they are all people and should be treated as such. Some customers spend more, some spend less. Others don’t spend at all. But alienating a customer based on any type of disconnect – be it looks, communication, or any other factor – is a huge customer service fail.

The first principle of creating customer loyalty is “Be the Customer.” “Walk in the customer’s shoes” is common sense insight, but certainly not common practice at some companies. Should “People over Profit” be the core value at your business, given the customer’s emotional toll from a catastrophic event, companies certainly should be more empathetic.

A company could use an event to build brand loyalty by telling its customers they were waiving the cost of any lost any lost unit. Instead it only reinforced the collective customer perception that some companies are the worst at customer service.

What is it with cable providers and their customer service? Another horror story, recounted by Time, comes from former Engadget editor-in-chief, Ryan Block who was given a rough ride by a “customer retention specialist” when he called to cancel his contract with Comcast.

As the recording of the call (or at least, an eight-minute snippet of it) proves, sometimes an agent needs to know when to give up.

In a painstaking call that often feels like a political debate rather than a customer service query, Ryan asks multiple times if it’s possible to arrange to cancel the service over the phone and the unrelenting agent continually refuses to supply an answer, instead coming back with questions asking why he wants to disconnect.

Ryan eventually managed to get disconnected, but the impact on Comcast’s reputation suffered a big blow, and the company was forced to issue a statement outlining its embarrassment at the way the customer was spoken to. The Comcast cancellation story is notorious for the agent’s over aggressiveness.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

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