May I speak to a manager, please?

We all know that customer service sucks these days, in every way, shape, and form. Now there’s some quantification of that knowledge in the form of the American Customer Service Index:

A current snapshot of consumer satisfaction by the University of Michigan Business School reveals a large group of unhappy campers. In its most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index, the average score for the specific issue of complaint handling is 57 (out of 100) for the 40 industries tracked by the index. “No one does a particularly good job in handling complaints,” said David VanAmburg, managing director of the index, which measures consumer satisfaction with goods and services. There is one exception, though: supermarkets, which had a customer satisfaction score of 76 for the way they take care of complaints. The lowest score was recorded by local telephone firms (the index didn’t measure wireless phone service).

Even more disturbing, VanAmburg said, is that a closer look at 17 industries with enough data to measure satisfaction in great detail showed that 14 — or 82 percent — field complaints in such a way that they are driving customers away.

This reminds me of Nextel. I was planning on cancelling my Nextel service because it was too expensive and their phones didn’t have features I wanted. When I called to cancel, I was reminded of the $200 fee to cancel, and with only a few months left on my contract, it would be cheaper to keep the service for a little while. I agreed, but then when I told the rep my reasons for cancelling, he decided to argue with me — very rudely — and insisted that Nextel phones did have Bluetooth connectivity but that I was a layman and didn’t understand the terminology. He was clearly an idiot. But he was so rude and dismissive of me as a customer, that I told him to cancel my service immediately. At the beginning of the conversation he had convinced me to stay, and he was so unhelpful and rude that by the end Nextel had lost a customer. Sad.

But this is nothing new nor unusual these days, which is startling. There’s a new method of business in place, one which I just don’t understand. Companies put all their energy, money, and marketing into gaining new customers, but once they’ve got you they care not a whit. Case in point, Dish Network satellite service. I was a charter subscriber to this service way back in the mid 90s. I plunked down quite a chunk of money on the first receiver. Every time thereafter when the dratted things broke down, I’ve had to pay full price to buy a new one. But new subscribers can get boxes free or at a substantial discount. I’ve never once gotten a letter from them thanking me for being one of their first customers, for referring them to a network of people that now numbers in the dozens. No, they’re obsessed with adding new customers rather than servicing the old.

In the end that strategy must become difficult to maintain because a company is simply getting new customers at a discounted rate to replace old customers who have cancelled service. Eventually, there is a diminishing return, both in customer numbers and in revenues… isn’t there?

The article I started out quoting goes on to address the “speak to a supervisor” gambit:

increasingly, many systems are making it difficult, if not impossible, for consumers to talk to supervisors — a step many advocates urge consumers to take if they can’t get their issues resolved.

“Agents are under tremendous pressure not to give you access to the second level,” said John Goodman, head of the Arlington customer satisfaction consulting firm TARP.

“There may not be a real supervisor there; there may just be a team leader who’s only slightly more equal,” Goodman said. Or, firms may not want to tie up the supervisors, using them only for “people going ballistic, threatening to sue or go to the public service commission. So agents just tell customers there isn’t a supervisor; in many cases it’s a lie,” Goodman said.

Steve Newman of Arlington tried to talk to a supervisor when he was not satisfied with the way AT&T Wireless agents dealt with his complaint that the company failed to credit his December payment, even though he had the canceled check in hand. He ended up talking to “Mary,” Newman recalled. “When I asked Mary to transfer me to a supervisor, she told me that supervisors do not speak to customers.”

“What do supervisors do?” Newman responded.

“Supervisors supervise,” said Mary.

When Newman pressed her again, he said Mary told him: “I’m not going to tell you again — you’re not going to talk to a supervisor.”

Newman asked for Mary’s last name or employee number, at which point Mary hung up, Newman said.

Websites on customer service:
Drive You Nuts
Complaints.com
Planet Feedback
The Squeaky Wheel