We sometimes get so immersed in this digital world, this technological wonderland, and in regulatory processes that such simple matters as good customer relations get ground up somewhere in the company shredder.
So it was last week when I questioned a bill — a $16 bill at MCIworldcom. Some 45 minutes into the second of two telephone conversations I gave up in disgust. I had received a bill for a telephone number that I never had. I called the number and it turned out to be a pre-paid cellular phone for someone I didn’t know.
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From the outset, those at MCI agreed I was correct, first the financial department, then customer service to which I was switched. Only they couldn’t send me a letter or notation that the bill I received was in error, so that I could have it for my records.
Nope, they didn’t have a standard letter for that one and no one, not even the supervisor was authorized to write a letter on her own. Yes, the customer service rep and the supervisor understood my point and agreed I was right — the financial folks switched me there in the first place to arrange for a credit — but all they were authorized to do was to verbally acknowledge the error. No letters, nothing in writing, no record for me.
Customer service? Not a bit. Call it customer disservice.
What is more disturbing is that MCI-worldcom is not alone. Too many companies forget that the way to build long-standing customers — or to win them back — is by providing outstanding customer service. We are hearing too often these days of some dotcom companies that may have held all the technological expertise, but failed because they didn’t know how to deal with their customers or potential customers.
There’s simply no replacement for good customer service.
Even in the presidential election fiasco, the argument in Florida was not over the election, but over who or what should do the counting — are machines, which missed thousands of ballots, more reliable than people, who may succumb to subjective interpretation? The U.S. Supreme Court, at least slightly more than half of them, apparently sided with machines over human beings (first they stopped the hand count, then decided there wasn’t enough time to finish it. Figure that one out.)
Translate it to the business community. Do we get so consumed by only being able to send out form letters turned out by a machine, that we don’t perform our primary function, particularly if we are in the customer service department. I always thought that meant providing service to the customer.
While businesses need to keep up with technology, they can never lose site of the value, the overwhelming necessity, of maintaining a responsive and cooperative customer service department.
Such a department should have the flexibility to leave a customer, or potential customer, feeling that this company sees value in him or her as a person, and then ultimately, as a customer.
