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.