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This is a Guest Post by Adoh Caleb, A media expert at #BusinessDay Nigeria
Someone once said customers literally pay
for the CEO’s exotic cars and vacation trips around the world. Well, I think we
deserve to be given proper attention than what we receive. Without the
customer,
many organizations will literally not be in business. Customers, over the years
are the agents responsible for creating brand culture and brand image. It is
alarming that regardless of the premium placed on customer service and customer
satisfaction, a good number of service companies go completely wrong when
offering customer service—some literally throw caution to the wind and ignore
common interactional ethics.
After taking a long while to have the
opportunity to talk to an online customer agent—approximately 10-30 minutes and
getting bombarded with unnecessary distractions positioned intelligently as
detours which will get you sidetracked on your way to peace, these customer
agents , maybe because of the stress of attending to some customers who are
jerks end up pissing off nice and polite customers like me.
They end up doing the following things:
1. Insisting that something
works when it doesn’t.
I remember calling different customer
agents of the same service provider in the same day, the funny part is, they
kept on telling me to do the same thing the previous guy I spoke to proposed.
“It’ll work, just keep on trying” they said, but it never worked. This leads us
to the second thing they do frequently
2. Pulling out the “we are
working on it” Card
If
you don’t have a single clue on how to fix my issue, please, I’ll rather prefer
you telling me than you pulling out the “we are working on it “card or “we will
send your issue to the right department”
Few days ago, I called a customer care
agent and the dude was pretty calm. At a point he got stuck, and he wasn’t
ashamed to put me on hold to get clarifications on the various services I
requested. He may have decided to act all smarty pants like he knew what he was
doing, instead he chose to be honest.
3. Trying to end the call by
all means possible/Completely ending the call during service process
OMG! Really? Ended the call? Yes! Right in
my face! Inasmuch as I understand the stress involved in dealing tirelessly
with people’s issues and rectifying them ASAP, ethics should not be thrown out
the window
This rarely happens though—a case whereby a
customer agent hangs up on a customer during a customer service process. I must
say, this happens frequently to customers who are total jerks. It happened to
me once, and I was definitely not a jerk when that happened. I guess the agent
at the other end of the phone got bored with my acting all sissy and
complaining about tons of service problems I faced.
4. Forcing one to subscribe
to a service
Offer
a service because it makes life easier for the customer not because it reduces
the number of customers on the e-queue waiting to be attended to. Self-service
technology is great, but customers want to be treated like the humans they
are—they want to interact with people and have the assurance that the solution
to their pressing issue is being attended to by a human and not a robot.
Telecoms companies should understand that the customer has the right to select
a means of servicing that they prefer.
PS: Customer care agents are great people,
but nevertheless, during the customer service process, it is important that a
positive experience be created for both the customer and those offering the
services.
Customers, stop being annoying , too!
You can also make your own contribution to this topic by dropping it in the comment box below this article. Don't forget to share it as well
You can also make your own contribution to this topic by dropping it in the comment box below this article. Don't forget to share it as well
Yea, That's true. I hate the we're working on it bulsh*t
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