THE TROUBLE WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE

Everyone gets this. Customer is King or Queen, but only in ads, marketing brochures or speeches. As a customer we all have suffered at the hands of bad customer service. With all the advancements in communications esp. AI and ML things were supposed to be better. How come we feel it has become worse.

1) Badly designed products or services.

The net is down and your internet provider in the quest for better customer service had made a group on WhatsApp. Now between irate customers picking up on each other cues, and limited faulty responses, there isn't much that can be done. Whose idea is this??

Try tagging some airline or company on social media their digital team will respond, apologise and want all the details. And the sales team does not give them two seconds in the day. They are left with nothing but an escalation report. During all this the customer service metrics are religiously mapped and performance shown. It's another matter that the companies drowning in such complaints and could care less. The tagging of seniors also has outlived it's promised and from CEOs to ministers they have learnt to ignore these messages or pass them down to guys who end up responding as they have metrics to meet. But not to resolve.?

I raised a ticket and it was automatically closed in a health app. 'The customer is an idiot', their actions say.

2) Declining quality standards.?

Time was you could order a reasonably workable tradesman from a siteforce is lie UC. But in it's quest for growth, majority of their workers there are not qualified for such the job and most will ask you to rate them immediately after a job and if it proves to be faulty later too bad. This entire rating system is so easily riggable. The same was said for restaurants, schools and larger bodies who would have a few main places and the rest would be franchisees. And these were the ones you avoided. Unless it was a food court in a mall on Sunday. Or if you didn't know any better.?

3) Real Disinterest.

Take a developer. He insists that he will deliver possession a full year before the RERA date. And fully books. Now one month before his promised delivery date he backtracks and says he will deliver on RERA date. Now it's not illegal. But think of those on rent. And paying EMI. Don't they have to pay more basis this. If he had clearly mentioned what he was going to do they would have gone else where. But being a big builder gets to do what he feels like.

SBI, the bank had reached a level that was honest. If you went there you knew what you were getting into. But the bank that claimed easy account opening and denied it on basis of due diligence issues is actually misleading you. That is a CS failure.

4) Caprice

Am traveling. Have a boarding pass. Have asked for the early aisle in the second leg. Got it. Great. Except the little miss jn Ethiopian airlines decides to spice up my life. And change my boarding pass. At the gate that too. Got in between two seats and when I saw that I called out to her and said why did you change my seat. She said aircraft changed? But it hadn't so why me? He was peeved and said the flight is not full and I can recline at the back.? Their woman did not get it. Point is if I am explained what is happening I might agree or disagree. But I this scenario I will always object. But for ET it seems to be an optional effort.?

4) Partnerships.

A) Qatar Airways is a beautiful airline. Till it tied up with Indigo, the bane of the reasonable traveller. In it's quest to grow it changed its flights and now it's nearly impossible to get a QA flight on both sectors. I've been through two delays and much as I love a stopover in Doha. The processing time is too much. The flight to Doha was 6E not sexy at all. So it was too late for us to catch our connecting.?

4 hours later we were allowed to go to the Hotel and I guess this is what jury duty feels like. Net result is that the normally good QA grounds staff is now terse and testy. Not flying QA as I don't want anything to do with Indigo. But now that the have AI'ed Vistara I don't know what to do for domestic flights in India. Dread it now.

B) We use Amazon for ordering almost everything. But it has tied up with a company called Shadowfax. Now this delivery partner is a pain. It has automated WhatsApp message that are more like a demanding ex. Where are you? My man has left. Are you in your house? Message us. Call him. What in the blazes is this? Oblivious to the mayhem his employer is creating the delivery dude starts calling me. says there is no one at home (lie). That he was there till 4.30 pm when the time he sent the message was like 3.30 pm. The next day he starts calling me BEFORE he sets out on the trip. I of course have to wait hand and foot because the missus ordered a packet of Masala and of course even this requires an OTP upon delivery. Needless to say, it spiced up the morning banter with the missus and Amazon will probably not see orders from us anytime soon. I know I know they don't care. Joining a long list of companies.

The question is why fix what's not broken? We all got along well before Gandalf's horse got into the act. So why bring him in? Are the orcs of Ecommerce calling the shots? Or Is SF's VC funding subsidising their contract with Ammajan? Woe be upon his backers. May they lose all their money.

Yes the last example was recent and personal.

What? You want me to present solutions? Who are you? My boss??