A few months ago, we had an irate customer who couldn’t find an order confirmation email in his inbox (it went to his spam folder erroneously) – our Live Chat support had already told him that a ticket was raised and a solution will be provided within 48 hours. But that didn’t stop him from writing a complaint on the company Facebook page and a beautifully worded InMail to me accusing us of fraudulent behaviour.
Now, this incident came to mind because of my own experience with organisations and their response mechanism to deal with me when I am at my irate best.
With GMVs & customer delight in the mix, one is spoilt; it becomes intolerable if our wishes aren’t granted within a couple of hours.
We have become accustomed to not good but incredible customer service experiences – whenever I have had an issue with the new age e-commerce players from Urbanclap to Amazon to BigBasket and Uber of course, I have always been thrilled. And with the advent of organisations like Zomato, the already-careful restauranteurs now go above & beyond to keep us happy lest we unleash a less-than-favorable review.
Having said that, it baffles me when some organisations still pretend to live in the dark ages. Someone like me, who is patient and has been on the other side calmly waits for my issues to be resolved for up to 20 days depending on the utility of the service in my life; beyond that it is unforgivable!
Imagine if it takes more than 395 days, what according to you should be an appropriate reaction? I am speaking of course about an essential utility i.e. Piped Natural Gas and no prizes for guessing the organisation! They know I am talking about them!
What started in last April with being turned away from 2 offices, asking us to submit a myriad documents, collecting our cheque, encashing it and then being told that we were on ”priority” (it is now a profanity in my dictionary) since October, multiple tweets, countless phone calls and the emails! I did find myself being rather flowery and taking pleasure in every scathing sentence. Finally, 13 months later, we had it – now I could make tea & breakfast at the same time; life was suddenly more beautiful, it felt like a dark cloud had drifted away.
Currently, I am having an issue with our Internet service provider who has not resolved the problem in 13 days now – I can live with tea but not without Wifi! On top of that, they tell me every day that the connection will start in 4 hours – fool me once, not 13 times!
Instead of getting flustered, I started to wonder how I would deal with it since I do assist with the Customer service process in my organisation. Frankly, I would like to be told the truth – transparency will make me angry initially but in the long run, I will always trust the company because they did not try to “handle” me, instead it gives me the freedom to make the appropriate arrangements well in advance. And if the issue does get resolved earlier, there I am delighted!
It is one part what companies should do but we as customers have turned into whiny 8-year olds who need candy when they need candy! Having a higher standard for our experiences can never be a wrong thing but being difficult isn’t the solution – there are practical issues, most organisation do want to fix it asap and they work overtime to do the same.
We must all try to handle issues with tact, maturity and honesty! It should be about building relationships not concluding transactions, that’s when customers become fans. And like any relationship, a little give & take goes a long way.
Of course, there will still remain some that work in a bureaucratic manner (again, you know who I am talking about), in that case, go ahead and rant. It’s your right.