Bringing Quality Back to Customer Service

While this article fondly recalls the personal touch and convenience of customer service in the past, it also offers hope to frustrated consumers. Many corporations have realized customer retention is just as important as making money. Bad experiences with customer service drive consumers away and good experiences keep them. Consumers are taking back control by telling others what to expect. Let's hope great customer service, with live and helpful representatives, makes a lasting revival.

Far From Always Being Right, the Customer Is on Hold
By: Alina Tugend
New York Times
Published: May 24, 2008

REMEMBER the days when, if something went wrong with a product you ordered, you picked up the phone and there was a live person on the other end? Wait, there is more. You asked for customer service and were transferred — to another human! And that person perhaps even solved your problem.
I get a warm feeling when I think about that, like fondly remembering an old teacher. We have become so used to the impersonal and baffling labyrinth of automated voice systems at just about every company — and then poor customer service when we do reach an actual person — that we just grudgingly accept it....
Complaining about bad customer service is such a sport now that it should be an Olympic event. But I am curious about how it devolved into this, if there is anything I can do about it and if it is ever going to change.
A little history: These interactive voice response systems, known as I.V.R., which recognize speech or touch tones, began in earnest in the 1980s, and the idea was that they would cut costs by reducing the number of people a company needed to respond to customer complaints.
The trouble is, companies were more interested in saving money than customer retention.
“ ‘The customer is always right’ got totally lost,” said Michael Schrider, president of J. Lodge, a call-monitoring business (as in “this call is monitored for quality assurance.”). “It was ‘the customer is a pain.’ ”....
But things have started changing, for a number of reasons. For one, companies discovered that customer turnover was expensive....Another reason for this change is that the very technology that is driving us crazy is helping people fight back.
Consumers are posting their experiences with customer service online and warning people away from businesses that do not offer a good follow-up with customers. Secondly, there are Web sites that tell customers how to get around an automated system....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/business/yourmoney/24shortcuts.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology

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