Customer service go to the dogs

lightspeed

Is the standard of customer service today as bad as always or has it hit a new low?

It seems to me that we are going towards the american model of customer service, where customers seem to matter less and companies are willing to cut costs at any cost to quality of service.

Below is the painful saga ongoing with PC World. Below is what ive posted to their facebook page.

"Im just going to keep posting the below 100 times for every minute I was on hold. That means I have a lot of work ahead of me so i best crack on with it. Before Christmas at start of December I ordered products from pc world for €170.
Customer service was an automatic email blaming black Friday for delays and an 1890 number forever on hold.
Had to leave messages on their Facebook page and got responses days apart. First confirming items in stock then 2nd reply back confirmed I'd receive them before Christmas. However; few days before Christmas I get a phone call saying not in stock and i cancelled the order. Still no money refunded, no response from emails and still phone stays on hold.
Avoid ordering from pc world/curry's online at all costs. Please share if anybody else feels like customer service has gone to the dogs"

Is it just a minority of companies? I could name others and give other examples of where quality of service is just horrid. PC World/Currys seem to be in a world of their own.

The Sidewards Man

The dogs are a good night out what is the problem op

Fleawuss

No revelation OP. Private enterprise has collapsed into cynical enrichment of top management and major shareholders with pretence about customer service.

Azalea

By the way, that is not poor customer service - that is extremely stretched resources at the busiest time of year causing a backlog into January. Can you not consider the thousands and thousands of other customers that ordered same time as you?

This isn't an issue of poor customer service - it's an issue of crap support for the customer service teams, something that deserves to be put to higher management, not the frontline workers run ragged. Facebook is not higher management, it's the same frontline workers.

Who let the dogs out?

222233

I have worked in Customer Service and I don't accept the excuse of "it's so busy", "we have to deal with x amount of callers" - I always strived to be polite even after a horrendously long shift or receiving hours of abuse because thats your job and if the service your representing is s*** people are entitled to complain.

The customer service standards here are horrendous, even some of my past colleagues attitudes made me sick, giving out about clients while they were on hold etc. Getting angry at a CS agent doesn't really achieve anything, they generally tend to just laugh it off to their colleagues.

Customer service is tricky because generally there isn't a whole pile you can do as an agent, your quite limited and often the bigger issues do require management who often probably don't care but what I can't understand is the terrible standard amongst companies of CS agents.

It is not a minority of companies being a CS agent is a minimum wage job unless you are a supervisor, many of these people from my experience hate their jobs and make no effort whatsoever to enjoy what they do. I personally loved it and enjoyed all the different bits the public had to offer because I understand their anger ( I have had many many arguments with CS in various companies) the problem IMO is lack of interest in problems by management, sheer lack of caring from the people doing CS jobs and just downright laziness.

lightspeed

Azalea wrote: »

By the way, that is not poor customer service - that is extremely stretched resources at the busiest time of year causing a backlog into January. Can you not consider the thousands and thousands of other customers that ordered same time as you?

This isn't an issue of poor customer service - it's an issue of crap support for the customer service teams, something that deserves to be put to higher management, not the frontline workers run ragged. Facebook is not higher management, it's the same frontline workers.

Its in issue that they obviously new they would have an increase in sales with spending on marketing and large discounts and so must have known they would need to high more staff. Its January now and yet still no one to answer the phone, reply to email or train staff by the look of it.

Why?

So they can make more profit and keep cost lower and dont care if customer gets screwed over in the process once its profitable.

Im the consumer/customer? explain to me why i should sit back and say thats fine?

Explain why i should be happy for it to become the norm for customer service to take hit so less jobs are created so a large profitable company can make a little more profit?

Facebook is litteraly the only avenue they respond to and higher management will here about it if others share similar stories like mine of which from what ive seen already there are more than enough.

The Sidewards Man

Deleted User wrote: »

Who let the dogs out?

The bitches.

Andre 3000

Nice selfie OP

222233

lightspeed wrote: »

Its in issue that they obviously new they would have an increase in sales with spending on marketing and large discounts and so must have known they would need to high more staff. Its January now and yet still no one to answer the phone, reply to email or train staff by the look of it.

Why?

There is usually a period in which customers must be dealt with it varies from company to company probably 10 days or so (working days), they don't tell you that when you call. No one wants to give refunds because generally thats the "bad" CS log the one where you haven't resolved the problem. Lazy people would leave you until the very end, they would prioritise the person who may get them a bonus as opposed to the person where they will have to make management sign off on a refund.

They also tend to take notice when you go online so personally I would use social media.

Mr_Muffin

Ah, someone doesn't get what they want so they take to Facebook fishing for likes to make themselves feel better. Nothing new here.

The Backwards Man

I wonder how many satisfied customers they have every day, and not one of the bastards goes on Facebook to compliment them. As my old boss used to say, if everybody thinks you're a cnut you're doing something wrong, but if nobody thinks you're a cnut you're doing something worse.

222233

The Backwards Man wrote: »

I wonder how many satisfied customers they have every day, and not one of the bastards goes on Facebook to compliment them. As my old boss used to say, if everybody thinks you're a cnut you're doing something wrong, but if nobody thinks you're a cnut you're doing something worse.

It's not the publics responsibility to praise someone for doing their job, that should come from management.

Buona Fortuna

Hey,

Have a glass of wine, maybe a spliff.


Let that smile be your umbrella friend.

The Backwards Man

222233 wrote: »

It's not the publics responsibility to praise someone for doing their job, that should come from management.

It's not their responsibility to run crying to social media at the merest peeve either, but they seem to have no bother doing that:pac:

222233

The Backwards Man wrote: »

It's not their responsibility to run crying to social media at the merest peeve either, but they seem to have no bother doing that:pac:

Well actually it is, if no one is going to listen to you via the phone explain how else you are supposed to get results. Withholding money that can be easily released isn't exactly the merest peeve, that would take someone 5 minutes to resolve, someone who in my opinion is probably otherwise occupied updating their twitter or moaning to colleagues about their job.

Figbiscuithead

222233 wrote: »

Well actually it is, if no one is going to listen to you via the phone explain how else you are supposed to get results. Withholding money that can be easily released isn't exactly the merest peeve, that would take someone 5 minutes to resolve, someone who in my opinion is probably otherwise occupied updating their twitter or moaning to colleagues about their job.

How many times did you post that message up on their Facebook?

The Backwards Man

222233 wrote: »

Well actually it is, if no one is going to listen to you via the phone explain how else you are supposed to get results. Withholding money that can be easily released isn't exactly the merest peeve, that would take someone 5 minutes to resolve, someone who in my opinion is probably otherwise occupied updating their twitter or moaning to colleagues about their job.

Ah right, you're just talking about this specific case, or what we know of it. I'm speaking more in general terms. That's what I don't like about this outing of companies online, how do we know what's true and what's not? For every genuine concern there's a badmouth.

MarkR

lightspeed wrote: »

Is the standard of customer service today as bad as always or has it hit a new low?

It seems to me that we are going towards the american model of customer service, where customers seem to matter less and companies are willing to cut costs at any cost to quality of service.

Below is the painful saga ongoing with PC World. Below is what ive posted to their facebook page.

"Im just going to keep posting the below 100 times for every minute I was on hold. That means I have a lot of work ahead of me so i best crack on with it. Before Christmas at start of December I ordered products from pc world for €170.
Customer service was an automatic email blaming black Friday for delays and an 1890 number forever on hold.
Had to leave messages on their Facebook page and got responses days apart. First confirming items in stock then 2nd reply back confirmed I'd receive them before Christmas. However; few days before Christmas I get a phone call saying not in stock and i cancelled the order. Still no money refunded, no response from emails and still phone stays on hold.
Avoid ordering from pc world/curry's online at all costs. Please share if anybody else feels like customer service has gone to the dogs"

Is it just a minority of companies? I could name others and give other examples of where quality of service is just horrid. PC World/Currys seem to be in a world of their own.

You threatened to spam their Facebook page because you were on hold? I lost any empathy I might have had for you at that point. Petty and pointless.

darkpagandeath

This was happening in the 2000s hardly new, I like the model where you get a survey and regardless what the complaint was the person who receives the survey gets the flack for it. So x person did not like sales, engineer sends out survey engineer gets the flack for sales ....

Azalea

lightspeed wrote: »

Its in issue that they obviously new they would have an increase in sales with spending on marketing and large discounts and so must have known they would need to high more staff. Its January now and yet still no one to answer the phone, reply to email or train staff by the look of it.

Why?

So they can make more profit and keep cost lower and dont care if customer gets screwed over in the process once its profitable.

Im the consumer/customer? explain to me why i should sit back and say thats fine?

Explain why i should be happy for it to become the norm for customer service to take hit so less jobs are created so a large profitable company can make a little more profit?

Facebook is litteraly the only avenue they respond to and higher management will here about it if others share similar stories like mine of which from what ive seen already there are more than enough.

Again, not one bit of that indicates frontline staff deserve the blame. Facebook will likely (and rightly) ban you for spamming.

Nobody is saying you should be ok with it, but you shouldnt shoot the messenger and definitely shouldnt spam their Facebook. If you posted your complaint to Facebook once - bearing in mind you are speaking to people who are not at fault, then sent a private mesage with your details (they won't be able to say much to you without those, only a generic response) that would be completely fair enough and a good approach. If there is a delay with replying, that is due to a load of other customer queries.

hatrickpatrick

Outsourcing is the worst thing to ever happen to customer service and is one of the reasons I like Apple, who have staff on hand in Genius Bars who are actually trained in the coding of Apple software and to know what each specific error message means, as opposed to the generic "try turning if off and on again, throw it away and get a new one if that doesn't work" you get from other customer service folk.

This clip pretty much sums up exactly what's gone wrong with customer service at least as far as phone support goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqnFnWSYzaQ

Azalea

222233 wrote: »

Well actually it is, if no one is going to listen to you via the phone explain how else you are supposed to get results. Withholding money that can be easily released isn't exactly the merest peeve, that would take someone 5 minutes to resolve, someone who in my opinion is probably otherwise occupied updating their twitter or moaning to colleagues about their job.

You seem to have poor understanding of the setup. When I worked in it for years, I had extremely high standards and wanted to deliver excellent service, but sometimes there was only so much I could do, sometimes I had to give replies they didn't want to hear (not my fault, I didn't make the rules), sometimes it was really busy which, like it or not, is a real thing that isn't avoidable so don't blame advisors for phone delays and email response delays. Sometimes it has to be escalated to another department.

I would do whatever I possibly can though.

caille

I understand your frustration, OP, however, spamming their FB page is most definitely not going to resolve your issue sooner and most likely will put you at the bottom of the sorting out issues pile.

I have worked in customer services and I have also been very very frustrated in dealing with some companies, over the years, regarding lost items or money not being refunded more quickly.

However, I know that agent's get a very bad rep and have conditions of work that I would not want to be in again, I have found if you give them a break, they do their utmost to resolve issues (Ulster Bank and Irish Rail agents particularly stand out very positively for me, in recent times, in how I was dealt with).

Willbbz

lightspeed wrote: »

Im just going to keep posting the below 100 times for every minute I was on hold.

Serious question, are you a child?

uch

I Like Cake

Whitewinged

lightspeed wrote: »

Is the standard of customer service today as bad as always or has it hit a new low?

Eh let me just check that for you.....sorry but Computer says No

Fr_Dougal

Was on to Bord Gais today, they were lovely.

222233

Azalea wrote: »

You seem to have poor understanding of the setup. When I worked in it for years, I had extremely high standards and wanted to deliver excellent service, but sometimes there was only so much I could do, sometimes I had to give replies they didn't want to hear (not my fault, I didn't make the rules), sometimes it was really busy which, like it or not, is a real thing that isn't avoidable so don't blame advisors for phone delays and email response delays. Sometimes it has to be escalated to another department.

I would do whatever I possibly can though.

As previously stated I worked in CS not so long ago during which time I had been moved between 2 outsourced companies - I also did CS part time in my last position therefore I have seen the setup for 3 separate companies.

It;s great that you delivered wonderful service and I do understand the lack of capacity one has as a cs agent, but as I previously pointed out often management are required to intervene which much of the time they simply have no interest in doing.

I didn't blame the advisors but it is no secret that these jobs are not well paid and very easy to get a position in because of the huge turnover of staff - this is indicative of the hard work that is involved which from my experience is not suited to the vast majority of people who don't work well under severe pressure.

In my own experience I have spoken to very few nice and helpful agents, I have spoken to far more who have been rude and unhelpful. I have for quite some time been very bothered by what companies see acceptable in their cs operations and the attitudes of staff.

222233

Figbiscuithead wrote: »

How many times did you post that message up on their Facebook?

I am to the OP I didn't post anything to FB I replied to this thread.

Junkyard Tom

Lllllllet's take a riiiide and run with the dogs toniiiiight in suburbiaaaaaa.

PC Lackey

A certain large Irish diy supply providers comes to mind.

Gormless ass-clowns, member of staff stood yapping and laughing on the phone as I stood right in front of them.

PC Lackey

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Lllllllet's take a riiiide and run with the dogs toniiiiight in suburbiaaaaaa.

you will find your car seats stained with shyte in suburbia


in suburbia


in suburbia

Corpus Twisty

Never was €170 whinged about by so many, for so long.

The Sidewards Man

Corpus Twisty wrote: »

Never was €170 whinged about by so many, for so long.

Its almost a weeks dole to some of the posters here sure :pac:

extra gravy

Hard to know whether it's gotten worse or if more people are just unreasonable whingebags that would prefer to air their grievances on social media rather than deal with them privately.

Saw one recently where a guy had ordered a drink in a restaurant but for whatever reason the waiter forgot to bring it to him. Instead of giving said waiter a gentle reminder, the customer decided to sit there like a sad bastard and actually count the time he was waiting for the drink. He then went on to rant about it online. Some customers need to get over themselves.

seamusk84

^This

People are just getting more and more whingy. Taking out their frustration with their own lives at any given opportunity.

Robsweezie

extra gravy wrote:

Hard to know whether it's gotten worse or if more people are just unreasonable whingebags that would prefer to air their grievances on social media rather than deal with them privately.

They'll make a slight grunt or grimace in front of the staff, then go home and hack away on the keyboard.

Azalea

222233 wrote: »

As previously stated I worked in CS not so long ago during which time I had been moved between 2 outsourced companies - I also did CS part time in my last position therefore I have seen the setup for 3 separate companies.

It;s great that you delivered wonderful service and I do understand the lack of capacity one has as a cs agent, but as I previously pointed out often management are required to intervene which much of the time they simply have no interest in doing.

So yes, it's not the frontline advisor's fault as I said. Yeah I found it surprising that you worked in customer service - I loved it too by the way. Would have stayed only for the hours.

In my own experience I have spoken to very few nice and helpful agents, I have spoken to far more who have been rude and unhelpful. I have for quite some time been very bothered by what companies see acceptable in their cs operations and the attitudes of staff.

Most customer service advisors I have spoken to have been very polite and helpful and friendly - and that includes before I ever worked in customer service. Your own manner when contacting them makes a huge difference. Whereas, while the majority of people I dealt with myself as a customer service advisor, were fine - often very nice, a significant minority of them spoke utterly disgracefully to me (and most of the time when they were the ones at fault).

You said you don't view "We're very busy" as an explanation for long delays with the phone being picked up/emails being responded to - but it *is*. I agree it should only be said as a last resort, but it's a valid explanation, and customers should remember they are not the only customer. When customers are experiencing problems and they are not rude (they don't have to be super nice, just not abusive) you want to go out of your way to help them. People are entitled to complain but they are not entitled to be abusive. It is good to have empathy for the customer, as you had - a very important part of customer service, but allowing yourself to be a metaphorical punchbag is going way too far.

You talk about laziness and complacency among advisors - that does exist, which is very unfortunate, but a tiny minority in my experience, which is most advisors wanting to help customers. I don't understand why you say nobody wants to give refunds - why would they not want to if the customer is entitled to one? Why would advisors deliberately make their own job more difficult? "Lazy people would leave you until the very end, they would prioritise the person who may get them a bonus as opposed to the person where they will have to make management sign off on a refund" - never heard of that.

I think people are answered quickly on social media by the way because there is a much lower volume of queries on that than there is over the phone/via email.

You talk about "nobody wanting to listen to you on the phone" - where are you getting this from? Advisors are bound by the company rules - this is not the same as being unhelpful. And your comments about people updating their Twitter (we did not have internet access) and moaning to their colleagues is just pure conjecture. It's like the assumption that people don't respond to emails for ages because they're ignoring them; it's because of a back-log.

In a nut-shell: don't shoot the messenger, write to the senior management.

Azalea

extra gravy wrote: »

Hard to know whether it's gotten worse or if more people are just unreasonable whingebags that would prefer to air their grievances on social media rather than deal with them privately.

The first one.

I went to a cafe today and the customer service was poor. The guy got irritated with where we chose to sit for some reason, so we moved to another table. Took our orders - I clearly stated what I would like, he obviously didn't listen, and then advised me I couldn't have the side dish I requested with that particular dish, to which I explained that wasn't the dish, so the order had to be started again. Then he went off fixing the wifi for ages, rather than giving the kitchen our orders. So we just said we were cancelling and left - easy peasy. Complain with your feet.

Steppenwolfe

Gotta love the optimism of ordering something online at the beginning of December and expecting it before Xmas.

Azalea

Steppenwolfe wrote: »

Gotta love the optimism of ordering something online at the beginning of December and expecting it before Xmas.

To be fair, Amazon or Apple would be able to do that no problem. PC World obviously cannot have their level of resources but a lack of resources is clearly an issue for them, and the OP's annoyance is understandable - they are just going about addressing it in the wrong way.

Robsweezie

You are rude/abusive = I don't help you, or I if have to, do so reluctantly

You are civil= i help you no problem

You are nice= I go that extra mile to help you

That is applicable to real life scenarios not just customer service. Are you gonna want to get your brother a cup of tea if he snaps at you not to forget to leave the teabag in, and doesn't use manners?

Don't be surprised if you find customer service behaviour mirroring your own. Even if it's not the most "professional " way to be.

The_Kew_Tour

PC World are awful to buy from.

Best buy cheaper elsewhere

Azalea

Robsweezie wrote: »

You are rude/abusive = I don't help you, or I if have to, do so reluctantly

You are civil= i help you no problem

You are nice= I go that extra mile to help you

That is applicable to real life scenarios not just customer service. Are you gonna want to get your brother a cup of tea if he snaps at you not to forget to leave the teabag in, and doesn't use manners?

Don't be surprised if you find customer service behaviour mirroring your own. Even if it's not the most "professional " way to be.

Being aggressive to customer advisors means they will do the job completely (although they can rightly disconnect people who keep swearing at them, after warnings) because that is what they are paid to do, and they have to (and they of course *should* do) but they likely won't be going the extra mile.

lightspeed

Mr_Muffin wrote: »

Ah, someone doesn't get what they want so they take to Facebook fishing for likes to make themselves feel better. Nothing new here.

No someone doesnt get any customer service from email or phone and have to use facebook to get a response because that is how **** customer service is now.

Used to be you got put on hold and talked to someone from India and now its becoming the norm to just wait until customer makes an issue on social media.

Until recently i worked in customer service for 5 years for a company contracted by a state body to manage tolls on a busy dublin motorway. Sometimes we were at a point for months where it would take 6 weeks responding to a message despite SLA being 48 hours.

Anyone who contacted us via facebook or twitter, we were told to respond to them straight away.

lightspeed

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Ah right, you're just talking about this specific case, or what we know of it. I'm speaking more in general terms. That's what I don't like about this outing of companies online, how do we know what's true and what's not? For every genuine concern there's a badmouth.

Well I understand your point. For what its worth im not sure if there is a currys/pc world rep on boards but if there is, id welcome them to challenge my story.

Furthermore, Im very proud of my actions and position ive taken. I also dont care about facebook and dont care if banned from it.

They intentionally launched the black friday discounts while intentionally not hiring the staff to deal with increase in sales. They done this while knowing Christmas was around the corner and yet still advertised stock as online with fast delivery of 4-5 days.

The company had two choices. They could hire more staff to maintain customer service and also create jobs. Alternatively, they could allow customer service to suffer in environment where social media has such a large impact on customer relations and assume Irish customers will keep shopping with them as we are just that stupid.

They choose the 2nd option. They know they dont respond by email or answer their phones and only respond via facebook.

If they want people to respond via social media and insist on that being the only method to communicate with customers, then I will honour and respect their wishes which is exactly what im doing.

A business should consider customer service as a necessary expense and deserves to suffer consequence and damage to reputation if it ever thinks otherwise.

I know me sending the same post to them again and again is an inconvenience for them, that is why ive done it.

I dont really care about the money. I didnt even notice it until recently when i checked my bank statement and saw it wasn't refunded. I also dont want anybody's sympathy. Why would I, how would it be of use to me?

I want a large profitable corporation to understand that if they intentionally choose to offer poor customer service to save a small amount of money, they will get all the consequences and potential costs associated.

As for the argument that its poor front line workers that will deal with all my posts, yes that is their job. If they dont have time to deal with other requests, id imagine backogs would grow and again similar issues would arise until PC world hire more staff. Which is entirely justfied and again the path they intentionally choose to go down when they choose not hire staff knowing they would be understaffed.

Azalea

lightspeed wrote: »

Furthermore, Im very proud of my actions and position ive taken. I also dont care about facebook and dont care if banned from it.

Why would you be proud of spamming?

I know me sending the same post to them again and again is an inconvenience for them, that is why ive done it.

But that will just create more work for them which will mean stretching resources again and maybe a further delay with your query.

As for the argument that its poor front line workers that will deal with all my posts, yes that is their job.

But the issues, which I agree with you are very poor, and their Facebook page does not look that great for responses (I agree you have a very valid grievance) are not the customer advisors' fault - they cannot help it if not enough people were hired. By the looks of it there are countless other customers like you and they are not going to be able to just single you out to prioritise. There is nothing wrong with caring about your money by the way - €170 is a lot, plus all the phone-calls you have made which you should not have had to. Could it be ordered through a PC World store?

VinLieger

PC world are absolutely shocking, they have no irish dedicated customer service the only number to ring is a UK one. Like with many of these companies the only way to get a reaction is to raise a public stink via twitter and literally going to a store and making an almighty scene

Also I know it's a super douche move and I have worked in CS so have experienced it from that end too but also having experience with PC world in this case it really is the only solution that will get results

lightspeed

Azalea wrote: »

Why would you be proud of spamming?

But that will just create more work for them which will mean stretching resources again and maybe a further delay with your query.

But the issues, which I agree with you are very poor, and their Facebook page does not look that great for responses (I agree you have a very valid grievance) are not the customer advisors' fault - they cannot help it if not enough people were hired. By the looks of it there are countless other customers like you and they are not going to be able to just single you out to prioritise. There is nothing wrong with caring about your money by the way - €170 is a lot, plus all the phone-calls you have made which you should not have had to. Could it be ordered through a PC World store?

Im proud to be part of the resistance.

In a fair free market, a company should be efficient and succeed or if it chooses not to be, it should suffer loss of earnings and ultimately bankruptcy. That is not a tragedy, it is a fair and justified development. If customers like me where not to broadcast such poor customer service, then there is a severe likelihood that a company will continue to pursue a strategy like the above until its the industry norm. The end result is corporate profit and performance bonus for top brass increases, jobs not being created where they should be, more pressure on existing workers and customer gets screwed.

Its because of horrible pests like me who will harass them on a daily basis as a result that it will make it more difficult for such companies to intentionally pursue such a strategy. Im very proud of that.

Your wrong that it will take longer for my query to get resolved. I emailed last week and still no reply. I guarantee you ill get a respond on facebook or twitter monday morning. Your failing to understand that this is the norm and how customer service works now. I have worked in customer service and know others in other companies who would agree with me on that.

You are also failing to understand that i dont care so much about my query getting prioritised. We have a small claims court for a reason after all. I care about causing them headache and problems so they accept that they cant just treat customers like dirt and will have to employ more staff if they going to follow strategies of growth.

Like you said, backlog from my posts will likely only worsen the situation and create more backlog. Obviously, this will result in more unhappy customers who will in turn post on facebook, twitter etc. They will then have to hire more staff and remember to do so next year and onwards, or wait until they are so famous for having poor service that it results in loss of sales and thus they have to hire more staff until it improved.

If I didnt take the actions im taking, how else would above be achieved?

Should i trail through Linkedin and see if i can find members of higher management and contact them asking them to care more about quality of service and less about greed an their performance bonuses?

I doubt that would work.

prinzeugen

I have worked in customer service and always followed one rule.

Treat everyone as you would like to be treated yourself.

I was face to face and could make stuff happen but I imagine call centres would be hell.