_11:44
After being on the computer all day and close to all night you really just need a couple hours away from it to just look outside and breath the fresh air.
I realized it was way to frigg’in cold to go outside and opted to stay inside and start reading a book. As you might have already noticed - I’ve finish Raving Fans and now moved on.
Raving Fans, a book written by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, is the perfect book when trying to figure out your customer(s) needs - along with your own. It shows us the lack of customer service in America and proceeds to explain how people don’t even know what customer service is anymore.
Quote from Raving Fans:
“Service is so awful customers expect to be abused, Cold food in restaurants, dirty public washrooms, late deliveries, rejected parts, lost orders, lazy staff - it’s all normal.
Bottom line: People expect bad goods and rude service. Give ‘em junk and they’re not suprized. just what they expected. As long as the abuse isn’t any worse than they expected, they’ll be back for more. They’re not upset. Do a survey. Check it out and they’ll say they’re satisfied. Satisfied customers. Ha! Satisfied sheep, that’s what I call them.
The service at your company should be so good your customers are a revolt waiting to happen. They’re only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing any better. Your customer service slogan should be: No Worse Than the Competition.”
Have you ever have horrible service?
posted on March 6, 2002 | 11:54 AM EST
Add to the discussion.
Horrible service … Russ’ - My mom ordered a roll with her soup - and when the waitress forgot to bring that with the meal my mom got up and went to the soup bar and got a roll, seeing as how thats where the waitress would have gotten it - my mom thought she would help her out and do it for her, give her a brake sort of a thing.
yea well - the waitress came back and yelled at my mom because she didn’t pay for the soup bar - she couldn’t have that roll … then she proceeded to take the roll BACK …
I don’t think I have to say anymore. What kind of service - in ANY restaurant would have the guts to TAKE some fricken BREAD back? Seriously.
Now here’s a story for you…
One day at work, I needed to call TransUnion (I think they’re a bank or some sort of organization under which are many credit unions/banks) for a client of ours. The goal was simple: Get the addresses for the seven or so banks on her credit report. By some sneaky manuevering (i.e., I pretended to be our client), I managed to get a live body.
It was then that I told The Customer Service Woman that I was actually calling on behalf of the lawyer of our client, and all I needed were a few addresses. Could she please provide me with them? Well, we went through a whole bunch of hassle, until she finally agreed to give me the names of three banks.
I gave her the first bank’s name.
“No, we don’t have that address,” she said.
I gave her the second bank’s name.
“No, we don’t have that one, either.”
I gave her the third bank’s name.
“We don’t have that one.”
“You don’t?” I said.
“No, not really,” she replied.
“Not really???”
I was flabbergasted. She then went off on this tangent about how the credit report that I had in front of me was too old — the woman obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
At this point, my boss, Corinne, looked over at me and said, “Put her on hold for a second.” The Woman said that she could stay on hold for 30 seconds, no more. I quickly told Corinne the story, and she picked up the phone and said, “Lady, what is it going to take for your to give us these addresses?”
Following which ensued the deliverance of 4 addresses.
That’s supposed to be customer service?
i feel that service in general has gone completely down the shitter. an 18 step process to reach your goal in every automated phone answering system is standard. you know: “press 1 for windows, press 1 for windows98”…and on and on. “enter in your account number and then the pound sign”. “the average wait time is approximately 30 minutes.” then when you actually speak to a human you have to repeat the info you just punched in. every service center in located in a different state and has no idea about your location. “i’m sorry we are just the processing center we don’t have any information about the service.”
it’s just bad.
bad at the core.
That’s a great example or a poor service, Aaron. It shows that customers have needs beyond the needs of the company’s products. People need to feel they belong to the group. People need to feel they’re important and what they do, think, and say truly matter.
It’s almost as if company’s need to give people some sort of symbolic hug. If they can somehow figure out how to do that they’ll have a devoted follower(s).
The sad thing (as Aaron pointed out so well below) is that we don’t really feel as though these companies actually care about us.
Just throw them some questions and if their problem doesn’t fit into those questions then send them to this department or tell them to call this #. I’m sorry but that’s not helpful and the odd thing is - we as consumers expect this and comply with it EVERYDAY.
Is there any hope of things changing? Personally I only see this sort of thing starting in the small business’s of America and hopefully it can work it’s way up.
Is this how you guys see it?
Jodi Says:
Horrible service … Russ’ - My mom ordered a roll with her soup - and when the waitress forgot to bring that with the meal my mom got up and went to the soup bar and got a roll, seeing as how thats where the waitress would have gotten it - my mom thought she would help her out and do it for her, give her a brake sort of a thing.
yea well - the waitress came back and yelled at my mom because she didn’t pay for the soup bar - she couldn’t have that roll … then she proceeded to take the roll BACK …
I don’t think I have to say anymore. What kind of service - in ANY restaurant would have the guts to TAKE some fricken BREAD back? Seriously.