How important IS customer service?

Great Debates
61

How about the example that many grocery stores are going to? They will have only one full service check out lane open, thus “encouraging” the customer to use the self check out. They also won’t have anyone there to bag the groceries thus “encouraging” the customer to bag their own groceries.

If they don’t want me to go to Super Walmart, then give me a reason not to.

I guess they’re just assuming that since there are only a few major grocery store chains, that we will just have to get used to self check out and no bagging help.

62

Slap my hand if I’m hijacking, but why do you need a whole separate person to bag the purchases at a supermarket? Checkout operators do that as part of their job over here, it’s what they’re paid to do. I can’t see it being a timesaving option, as it’s quicker for the checkout operator just to put the items directly into the bag, rather than handing them off to someone else to put in a bag, and thus double-handling it. Anyone?

63

No, you don’t. Australia checkouts have the operator put the item in the bag and it’s exactly the same speed give or take 5 seconds.

64

Perhaps that should be qualified by compensating for an employee who is totally incompetetant. e.g. I stopped at a small pizza restaurant for an all you can eat noon meal at the end of the rush perior with few customers still there. Picked up a salad and some pizza and sat down. A waitress stopped by to inquire as to what I wanted to drink. “Water please.” She disappered, I went back to the food bar for more, finished eating, left two cents on the table and walked out to the food preparation area for the bill/check and paid my bill. Never did see the water or the waitress!

When I got home I thought better of what I had done and called the manager to apologize for not talking with him at the time. He appreciated knowing that the waitress was not on her toes, and promised to correct her behavior for the benefit of both future customers and herself.

All too often the managers don’t have a clue as to what problems exist so they can correct them. By and large they all appreciate legetimate complaints.

OTOH there are, unfortunately, boorish unreasonable customers you would like to lynch on the spot

65

I’m going to disagree here. If and English-speaking American learns French in school, he/she get trained in managing your accent. Hopefully, when you speak French you sound reasonable close to the way a Frenchman sounds. (I know this takes years of practice, but it is part of learning a language.)
If your accent is incomprehensibly far departed from the standard for American English, and your ability to understand native American English speakers is poor because you can’t deal with normal Americans speaking at a normal pace, you are not qualified to answer a phone that American English speakers will be calling.
It doesn’t make you a bad person. I might have dinner with you. I might be your friend. But you should be working somewhere where answering the phone is 5% or less of your job.
I’m not talking about people who “sound” black, Chinese, Asian-Indian, etc. I’m talking about people who double the length of my phone calls dealing with them because I can’t understand them and they can’t understand me.

66

Customer service in general is quite important to me as a consumer.
If your business has superior customer services, in enhances my opinion of the operation.
If it has adequate customer service, then I’m happy.
If it has sub-par customer service, I will choose to frequent your competitor any time I can, unless another overwhelming factor keeps me coming back to you.
At the pricy end of the market, customer service has more significance. I think that’s been touched on already in this thread.
Your point about phony servers in food service is dead on. I see a lot of restaurants where the servers are either saying something they don’t believe, that insults me, or just doesn’t make sense.
If you can’t make the people who repeat your corporate slogan capture the spirit of your corporate slogan, you’ve fscked up. Either your morale is bad, your employees need to be replaced, or your slogan is unconscionably bogus.
At some chain restaurants I’ve seen, the place bats 3 out of 3 on the above sentence.
I really want an experience that would approximate me dining at home. With servants.
To make me a happy food service customer, take my order, never let my drink empty, and drop by ever couple of minutes. Don’t speak to me (I’m not paying to be here with my wife so you can interrupt me), but give me time to flag you down if I need you. Drop my food off, and ask about deserts at the end of my dinner. If no deserts, then bring check. And for christ’s sake, don’t be slow bringing the check. Nothing annoys me more than waiting to pay.
As you probably gathered, I’m a critical customer, but I’ll always tip 15% or better if I plan on returning.
If you suck particularly bad, you’ll get no tip, and I’ll avoid your location of the restaurant for 2 years. I fear that if I came back in those two years after I failed to tip you, you’d place pubes in my dinner or something.

67

Actually, I don’t think we disagree, Jonathan. We’re just interpreting Kevbo’s comments differently. Kevbo said, “Is it racist to think ghetto slang doesn’t show much respect for the customer?” If you have a strong French accent that your average customer won’t easily understand, I don’t think you’re showing any disrespect for the customer–although your boss arguably is by putting you on the phones. You may not belong on that particular job, but you’re not doing anything wrong.

If, on the other hand, you’re using street slang (of any type) that makes you hard to understand, then you definitely are showing disrespect. Slang can be turned on and off. When I’m speaking to a computer geek, I talk quite differently than when I talk to a naturalist. If you’re using lingo (or slang, or jargon, or whatever) that your customers aren’t likely to understand, that’s inappropriate and disrespectful.

68

I think a lot of businesses’ emphasis on customer service depends on where they see it in relation to where they believe they get their competitive advantage.

In other words, if they think it’s something that sets them apart from the competition for good or ill, they’ll emphasize it. If it’s something that doesn’t really buy them anything, then they don’t really care much.

Case in point: Most restaraunts are aware that good customer service is integral to a good dining experience. Hence the incentive system(tips as part of wage) that they have. Waitstaff that doesn’t emphasize customer service won’t last long.

On the other hand, companies that have you locked in through some way or another don’t typically emphasize customer service. Cable tv companies, cell phone companies, Microsoft, the old Ma Bell, etc… all have some degree of exit costs that make it inconvenient to switch, especially for something as minor as having to wait on hold for a while. It’s like the old SNL skit says “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.”

Where I think a lot of companies go off the rails is being excessively nice to idiotic customers. I used to work at a sporting goods store, and people would do stuff like buy 7 $1 plastic ponchos for a sporting event, then when it didnt’ rain, they’d return them. Or people would get pissy about sold-out merchandise and demand a substitute. Or they’d get cranky because on the Texas Sales Tax holiday, they had to wait a bit to get helped, because there were SEVERAL HUNDRED other numb-nuts in the store at that moment.

There is a theory they taught us in business school that something like 95% of customer service problems are caused by 5% of the customers. The implication was that if you could identify this 5% and drive them away, you’d do yourself a huge service because you’d reduce your customer service problems AND foist the jerky customers and their issues onto your competitors.

I think companies ought to do more of this. People are jerks, and there need to be consequences for abusing the customer service people and policies.

69

Customer service is very important.

I used a discount eyeware place once–just once–and went back to my higher-priced local optometrist because Discount’s lab ground the glasses improperly, then gave me a hugebargument at the sub-managerial level about how “all new glasses ‘feel funny’ for a week or 2”. Management had them sent back,but 6 months later, the frames started coming apart, and I had to pay for the repairs.

The local optometrist sells good frames that rarely give trouble. If they do, they’re repaired free of charge. Their lab has never screwed up,to my knowledge (Knowing her attention to detail, had the lab mis-ground a lens of mine, she’d have caught it without my ever seeing it.)

In auto service, I have a few locals I frequent.

My “battery guy” charges the same for batteries as WalMart but puts on new cable ends free of additional charge if he thinks the old ones are “iffy”. Wally would charge extra for that.

I have a mechanic who does everything not involving wheel alignment, since he doesn’t have the equipment for that. And a tire guy who sells me tires and does my alignments.

I hate the petty suburb I’m living in. Should I finally go from “constantly annoyed” to fully pissed and move back to Omaha, I’ll still bring my cars down here–at least until my new neighbors turn me on to their car people.

BTW, the only thing I use a WallyWorld or other chain garage for is flat tire repair in strange cities. You can get it done fast and fairly cheap, but since they use gooey plugs instead of patches and plugs eventually work their way out, I end up going in for a patch at one of my regular shops 6 months down the road.

I still miss my Dad’s late buddy who ran an old-fashioned butcher shop. He wasn’t always more expensive than the supermarket, and he’d sell you just one steak, roast ,or chop at a time while the supers all want you to buy in megabulk and act all put out if you want the half- a- carcass split up into smaller packages.

Customer service is very important to me, even with regard to a “freakin’ fast food sandwich”, as devotees of the Pit know. Interestingly, there were many sleazy practitioners of so-called customer service over there who tried to “tear me a new one” over there.

70

I heard this come up just today, and I have another case from a few years ago.

My neighbour was having his air-conditioner repaired, and pointed out that these were the same A/C guys he always goes to, simply because of their service. One of the guys recalled that when they started coming around, neighbour’s daughter was ten or so; she’s getting married next week. :cool:

I remember that at my last job, the company that supplied all our PCs gave us great service too. As a result, when the head of the purchasing department wanted us to get competitive bids for the next year, our hardware guy (with help from a few others) spent three days tailoring the specs in the request to fit our current supplier exactly.

Yes, customer service matters.

71

If customers are irritated by it, then by definition it isn’t good customer service. Good customer service does not simply mean being polite. It means, as other posters have pointed out, giving the customer what they want. If callers don’t want a long speech, then having the call center people give one, however polite, is not giving the callers what they want, hence it just isn’t good customer service.

A waiter who stops at your table every two minutes and asks a bunch of really polite questions about how your meal is and if you need anything else and is your water temperature ok, etc. is not necessarily giving good customer service, if the patrons feel bothered and interrupted. He’s being really polite and extremely attentive, but he’s also being annoying. Hence: not good customer service.

72

Exceedingly polite speech, sounding like you’re reading from a script all the time is not good customer service. Starting the call with a polite opener, then tailoring your speech to be more relaxed or formal depending on the tone of the customer (not mimicking them exactly) is something a lot of customers appreciate and seem to respond to, which helps make it good customer service.