The Evolution of Customer Service
By,
Jennifer E. Miller
Customer service in this country, and perhaps abroad, has changed so much recently; and not necessarily in a good way.
I remember calling 1-800 numbers and annoyed at punching number after number in a phone tree, many times getting nowhere. I finally figuring out simply pressing 0 several times, confused the system, and it eventually connected me with a living human being the wrong department. Nowadays, it's becoming more difficult to contact a company at all.
Have you ever tried to find contact information online lately? Open the company website, click on the "Contact Us" section, only to be rerouted to a general FAQ section containing canned questions and answers. If there is a number or email address for the customer service, it's buried behind some super secret squirrel website coding patter, in which one needs a masters degree from Sherlock Holmes to find. It's like I have to know some sort of crazy control+shift to uppercase letter+tab key sequence and type it correctly within 0.3779 seconds.
Have you ever tried to find contact information online lately? Open the company website, click on the "Contact Us" section, only to be rerouted to a general FAQ section containing canned questions and answers. If there is a number or email address for the customer service, it's buried behind some super secret squirrel website coding patter, in which one needs a masters degree from Sherlock Holmes to find. It's like I have to know some sort of crazy control+shift to uppercase letter+tab key sequence and type it correctly within 0.3779 seconds.
When I do finally find customer service service information, I rarely find a telephone number. Sometimes I manage to locate an email address, but most of the time the icon with the comic-strip-style dialogue bubble appears "Chat with Customer Service." Online chat: the equivalent to text messaging with strangers. However, as I found out recently, customer service chat can sometimes prove entertaining.
My package, from a certain online super giant who shares its name with a South American rain forest, did not arrive on time. Thanks to the handy FAQ section, I tracked my package only to find it was labeled as delayed, for whatever reason.When it still didn't show up on the new expected arrival date, I tracked it again. This time, a message at the top of the screen said, "Oh no. It looks like your package was lost. Click her for a refund." I don't want a refund, I want my stuff. This is where the FAQ section is no help. After successfully cracking the Sherlock Holmes keyboard sequence code, I was given the option to "chat with customer service." *Sigh.* Fine.
I am connected with customer service agent, named Queenie.
Say what? If you are familiar with The Berenstain Bears children's books, Queenie McBear is ringing a loud bell right about now.
Queenie asks how she can help me today. I have to type out the whole ordeal regarding my package. She apologizes for the trouble and states she will, as expected, help me out. Her next line is one that I have never heard from a customer service agent: "Everyone needs a hero and let me be yours."
Yeah, I just want my items delivered.
How can an online customer service agent can be my hero? Is she be able to dispatch an ambulance during a health crisis? What if the customer service agent's FAQ section can't reroute her screen to display my address? Does she even know where the real Washington is? Or will she connect to dispatch in Washington, DC?
Yeah yeah yeah, I know that's not what Queenie meant by being "[my] hero," but that does show how customer service has changed over the years. When we ordered something (even in the good old days of catalogs) it took a couple weeks or longer to find its way to our doorstep. We didn't start panicking until perhaps the six week mark. In a world of instantaneous satisfaction, we need customer service heroes to come to our rescue.
What I find strange, is that phone numbers and telephone calls are becoming obsolete. Why do companies make it so difficult to reach out to them? I don't understand why having a vocal conversation with someone is so off-putting. Even the supermarkets are pushing for those carside grocery pickups; where the customer places their order online, then an employee does all the shopping and brings it to your car (for a fee, of course). It seems physical shopping is beginning to be shunned.
It seems ironic that the world wide web was created to bring people closer together, yet appears to be having the opposite effect. Unless you consider online chatting or social media interactions personal, we are having less and less old-fashioned connections.
In case you were wondering, Queenie was able to reship my items and save the day. The evolution of customer service heroes rolls on.
Copyright 2018 Jennifer E. Miller
My package, from a certain online super giant who shares its name with a South American rain forest, did not arrive on time. Thanks to the handy FAQ section, I tracked my package only to find it was labeled as delayed, for whatever reason.When it still didn't show up on the new expected arrival date, I tracked it again. This time, a message at the top of the screen said, "Oh no. It looks like your package was lost. Click her for a refund." I don't want a refund, I want my stuff. This is where the FAQ section is no help. After successfully cracking the Sherlock Holmes keyboard sequence code, I was given the option to "chat with customer service." *Sigh.* Fine.
I am connected with customer service agent, named Queenie.
Say what? If you are familiar with The Berenstain Bears children's books, Queenie McBear is ringing a loud bell right about now.
Queenie asks how she can help me today. I have to type out the whole ordeal regarding my package. She apologizes for the trouble and states she will, as expected, help me out. Her next line is one that I have never heard from a customer service agent: "Everyone needs a hero and let me be yours."
Yeah, I just want my items delivered.
How can an online customer service agent can be my hero? Is she be able to dispatch an ambulance during a health crisis? What if the customer service agent's FAQ section can't reroute her screen to display my address? Does she even know where the real Washington is? Or will she connect to dispatch in Washington, DC?
Yeah yeah yeah, I know that's not what Queenie meant by being "[my] hero," but that does show how customer service has changed over the years. When we ordered something (even in the good old days of catalogs) it took a couple weeks or longer to find its way to our doorstep. We didn't start panicking until perhaps the six week mark. In a world of instantaneous satisfaction, we need customer service heroes to come to our rescue.
What I find strange, is that phone numbers and telephone calls are becoming obsolete. Why do companies make it so difficult to reach out to them? I don't understand why having a vocal conversation with someone is so off-putting. Even the supermarkets are pushing for those carside grocery pickups; where the customer places their order online, then an employee does all the shopping and brings it to your car (for a fee, of course). It seems physical shopping is beginning to be shunned.
It seems ironic that the world wide web was created to bring people closer together, yet appears to be having the opposite effect. Unless you consider online chatting or social media interactions personal, we are having less and less old-fashioned connections.
In case you were wondering, Queenie was able to reship my items and save the day. The evolution of customer service heroes rolls on.
Copyright 2018 Jennifer E. Miller
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