Customer Service is dead

[UP4014]

Isn't this the dichotomy of self service check in? The whole process can happen much quicker, without waiting in queues. (Check in pole swipe, dump bag with Q tag in the chute = done) Thereby, allowing the airline to claimed they've serviced the customers needs better. But it is the customers that have provided the service to themselves.

I can't remember the last time I had to wait domestically more than a minute or 2, it's is very quick to use the manned counter and there is service. In Sydney I only use the valet parking check in but Adelaide is my most frequent other airport and hardly anyone at the counters when I'm there.

Matt

 

[medhead]

I can't remember the last time I had to wait domestically more than a minute or 2, it's is very quick to use the manned counter and there is service. In Sydney I only use the valet parking check in but Adelaide is my most frequent other airport and hardly anyone at the counters when I'm there.

Matt

I checked a bag yesterday in ADL for the first time in about 12 months (for a domestic flight). The wait was about 1 minute or so. But I could've have used self service in that time. I could've checked in at the pole in the time it took me to walk to the service desk and the bag could've been down the chute in the time I was waiting in line. I find that service desks are these day full of groups with much luggage/ international connections who require much more time to check in my group. I agree that a machine isn't the airline proving service, but it can be quicker than waiting for a person.

 

[Julesmac]

and that's the amazing part... that consumers aren't fully aware of their rights. We had a computer die 13 months after purchase. A major chain also claimed they couldn't help as (a) the warranty had expired and (b) we'd need to contact the manufacturer.

Ten minutes later after talking to a manager and explaining our rights they took the computer off us and were sending it on our behalf to get repaired.

It might however be helpful to contact the manufacturer directly in a case such as Apple if they happen to have a store close by. It could mean your product is back in your hands much quicker by cutting out the time it takes for the retailer to process the paper work, send it off and then wait for it to be sent back. So the choice is there for the consumer.

The sting in that advice was - I was told I couldn't just rock up to the Apple store at Chadstone which is very convenient to me, instead I'd have to make an appointment to see one of Apple's geniuses (that's what they are called!) only to discover it would be in five day's time and at Doncaster, about 40 minutes to get to. Helpful, that. So I decided to try my luck at Chaddy, indeed I saw a genius, but he, and then his superior, then the store manager, would only offer a replacement, which would NOT be a brand new one. It certainly was one of the more annoying few days I've had!

 

[JessicaTam]

Apple: I had a problem with an iPhone soon after I bought it and Telstra (where I bought it from) were happy to help but said it would be quicker if I went direct. So I did and made it clear to the CSA that I wasn't leaving until I had been seen by a 'genius'. I was not going to make an appointment to see them as as my phone had not made an appointment to die on me. I was soon seen and had a new phone in hand. Great service after the initial nudge.

Tatonka: I bought a small backpack in Germany and the stitching failed on the strap. Took it to the agent in Melbourne and it was exchanged as soon as the customer rep next came past to visit. Great service

CBA: I bought some LMs on my CC and the bank rang me to confirm my identity as the sale country is in South America. They said I hadn't proved who I was so stopped the card and told me to visit a branch. This was 11.45am on a Saturday morning on the way to the airport. I was furious. Consistently cough service in branch as well. 3 statement accounts, 2 insurance policies, 2 mortgages, 1 credit card are no longer with them.

 

[harvyk]

I still love Samsung's response to the Apple "genius".

"It doesn't take a genius to be able to use our products". -(https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...ykAWGwYDADA&ved=0CC4Q9QEwBA&biw=1920&bih=1009)

 

[mannej]

CBA: I bought some LMs on my CC and the bank rang me to confirm my identity as the sale country is in South America. They said I hadn't proved who I was so stopped the card and told me to visit a branch. This was 11.45am on a Saturday morning on the way to the airport. I was furious. Consistently cough service in branch as well. 3 statement accounts, 2 insurance policies, 2 mortgages, 1 credit card are no longer with them.

I honestly think that CBA has lifted their game recently (it probably helps to have a contact who goes above and beyond), but I have to chuckle when it comes to their insurance branch. I cancelled a car insurance policy with them about 8 years ago now, so they hit me with a cancellation fee. Only problem was that they didn't have a due date on the letter, so to this day it remains unpaid.

 

[OzEire]

Another one for CBA. I price compared and found one of their insurance policies was competitive and bought it. At renewal I went online but couldn't get it to accept the payment.

So went to my branch and after the greeter advised me it could be done online, and learned that I was there because it wasn't working the teller says, I'll help you with that!

So the teller muses over the bill for a while, clicks away at his terminal while the line behind me grew. After a few mins he dials phone banking and says to speak with the insurance people. Ok... but very uncomfortable about giving lots of private info in front of a now long line of other customers.

Phone rep eventually says, sorry I cant help, can you go in to a branch!!! Sure, says I, be there in a jiffy.

Mr teller was busy with another customer so this is when I went and found the manager.

She was lovely and tried to help, but eventually it was clear that nothing could be done and we cancelled my policy there on the spot.

In summary, lots of willingness from the branch staff, but a lack of technical knowledge to fix the problem. And perhaps a lack of authority provided by the bank to customer facing staff to assist when even they can see something is not right.

 

[Jurahn]

I've had the (mis)fortune this week of dealing with the LG customer service call centre in the Philippines, after our 50" LG plasma had a major fail. It's just over 4 years old, so of course it's out of warranty, but I'm pretty peeved that it's failed so soon considering the amount we paid for it and that it's only used a few hours a week. The search function to find a repair/service provider on the LG website wasn't working, so rang customer service. The woman I spoke to refused to give me the info and said she needed to book the job with the service provider herself. I don't know what the point was of registering all the purchase details, serial number etc on the LG website at the time we bought it (and all the info on that and the other LG products we've bought is still there on my account when I managed to get into it later), because obviously their call centre does not have access to any of it and I had to provide every single detail, having to spell out names, address, model number etc - then when I said I'd just have to pop into the adjoining room to get the serial number which would take me all of about 20 seconds, she asked me to call back when I had it! Er, NO I don't think so. Luckily hubby was home and I stayed on the phone whilst he got the serial number. I'm sure if I left the phone, she would have hung up.

I had to explain the problems with the TV at least four times, as she couldn't seem to understand what the issues were - she then put me on hold for a while and came back and said to try a factory reset and then to ring them back after I'd done that if it didn't work. She was rather thrown when I told her we'd already done that (twice) and it had made no difference and then she finally told me she'd booked the job and would put me through to "our technician" (i.e. a service/repair centre in Perth). I explained that it was a public holiday here in WA and most businesses were closed so she probably wouldn't be able to do so, but she insisted, so I then spent a considerable time on hold whilst she tried - obviously unsuccessfully - to put the call through. She came back and said she'd "left a message" and that someone would call me within 24 hours. Whilst I was waiting, I'd managed to get the search working on the LG website, and had found there was a service/repair centre in the next suburb. I asked if she could confirm that she had booked the job with that particular service centre (which is the only one anywhere near us), but she refused again to give me the name of the company and just kept repeating that someone would call me within 24 hours. I read the details off the website and asked - again - if she could confirm the job had been booked with that company, and she finally, and very reluctantly, said it had been.

Needless to say, now 3 days later and no one has called, so looks like I'll have to contact the company myself anyway.

 

[Jurahn]

And an NAB one! I found some sizeable fraudulent activity on my credit card and immediately contacted NAB, who cancelled the card, and then followed a nightmarish 3 months of dealing with NAB trying to get it all sorted out (not to mention it took 2 weeks to get them to provide me with the number of the replacement card, which was a huge hassle as this was the card that had all my direct debits on it) They wouldn't reverse the fraudulent amounts whilst they were investigating, so told me not to pay them, but of course they then charged me interest each month as I hadn't paid the account in full! So had to battle with them on that as well. Didn't want to have anything to do with them afterwards, so moved my accounts to another bank and then went into a NAB branch to cancel my credit card - silly me, I thought it would be "safer" that way and I'd know it was done. The teller said she had to ring the Card Centre in case they wanted to speak to me, so she spent 20 minutes on hold waiting to talk to them whilst the line behind me grew and grew. Turned out no, they didn't want to talk to me, so she took the card (I should have got her to cut it up in front of me but didn't think of it), said it was cancelled and off I went. Checked my internet banking later that week and the card was still showing as active. I rang NAB's call centre, only to be told that yes, the card is still active and no, there's no record whatsoever on the account that you've requested it be cancelled. WTF ... they then cancelled the card for me - and I double-checked on internet banking later that day just to make sure!

 

[coles525]

Im always prepared for cough that may occur when ditching something.

An example was a cc a few years ago, said tgat you must cancel it at the bank, then give them the card to dispose of.

Before going in, I used my house shredder (does cc also), and took ever tiny piece to the bank with me!

 

[JohnK]

Some companies appear to focus less on customer service.

One of my pet hates is waiting and waiting for my simple call to progress in the queue. Simple solution would be to hire more call centre people?

 

[dajop]

Some companies appear to focus less on customer service.

One of my pet hates is waiting and waiting for my simple call to progress in the queue. Simple solution would be to hire more call centre people?

But the vast majority of people probably don't want to pay for customer service (in the price if the product). So hiring more people = less profits (or for many airlines these days greater losses) or price increases. It's a wonder companies haven't started charging for priority customer phone service, that skips hold queues...

 

[boomy]

Some companies appear to focus less on customer service.

One of my pet hates is waiting and waiting for my simple call to progress in the queue. Simple solution would be to hire more call centre people?

It will only get worse. As global economy is under pressure, more and more companies have to cut their budgets to stay competitive and the first thing they look at is customer service, simply because this department doesn't produce any immediate profits.

 

[archie400]

Dyson, IMHO, is one of those companies that shows "you get what you pay for". I own two Dyson vacuums. An older "barrel" vacuum and a stick version. I started to have problems with the stick vacuum's extension tube and the wire connector pulling out of the fitting after 15 months. I emailed Dyson to ask how much a replacement tube would be and they asked me to call their 1800 number. Speaking to a person in less than 5 minutes wait, she asked a couple of questions, and without hesitation, sent me a new replacement extension tube for free.

A few weeks later, I started to have an issue that the vacuum itself thought it was "out of temperature range" intermittently and would turn itself off. Again, an email to Dyson to ask for advice, having read the manual. Response was to please call us on 1800. I called and, again, after a couple of questions to see if we could do anything, they asked for my shipping details and sent me a new vacuum unit, again, NO CHARGE.

Yes, you do pay a premium price with Dyson and things do, occasionally go wrong, but their customer service is exceptional.

BTW. We also have a couple of those Dyson oval shaped fans, one is a heater as well. Dyson recently had a recall. How did I find out? I bought it from Costco Canberra and they sent me an email letting me know about the recall.

Jumped onto the website Dyson set up to deal with the recall and entered the details requested. A box arrived at the post office big enough to ship the fan back to them and included a pre-paid postage sticker.

Sent it back to Dyson and received an email when it arrived there to tell me they had it and another a couple of weeks later saying it had been repaired and was on its way back.

So, I guess I'll have to add another post about how great Costco customer service is. I've had a couple of returns to them and NO HESITATION on issuing a refund. They just wanted to know what the reason for return was and they were happy to refund the purchase.

 

[Dougo]

It will only get worse. As global economy is under pressure, more and more companies have to cut their budgets to stay competitive and the first thing they look at is customer service, simply because this department doesn't produce any immediate profits.

If they knew anything about marketing they would realise that a happy customer is a returning customer.

I've had the most stressful time over the past several weeks trying to spend money locally for a safari etc in Sth Africa .... have dealt with 2 wholesalers in Sydney. After being assured about prices not going up and deals etc being available, the first one in the Sydney CBD came back with a quote of some 25% MORE than the cost to travel in 2014.

The second one from Illawong, NSW - hopeless ... doesn't want to talk to me over the phone, just emails consequently it has taken some 2 weeks to get the quote which arrived yesterday with an "upgrade" saving us some $400+ pp. I questioned the figures as they didn't add up and asked for an itemised invoice for the different properties we were planning to stay at. They have failed to provide it and when it is all said and done, the cost pp for this holiday was much more expensive than the first agency for exactly the same properties !!!

So I rang an agency in Sth Africa directly and got the bookings I wanted at a great saving.

As for others comments with the bank and ATM, one Credit Union which we had an account in charged $2.50 p/transaction for a withdrawal face to face or from their ATMs. Get the money out from cash out at a retailer they said ... we only charge $1.50 per transaction for that. Only problem is if you want to get out $1K then some retailers put a cash out limit of $200. Oh, and they charged me $1 each time to transfer money out of my account to pay a loan I had with them. I don't have that CU account anymore.

I don't go to Bunnings anymore - I'm tired of explaining to pimply faced teenagers what "peg board" is, or what "marine ply" is etc ... and I'm tired of the response "it's over there" ... when I ask where a product is which I can't find...so Masters it is who seem to have mature workers - yay.

As for Officeworks - no respect for customers at all. Bye bye Officeworks.

 

[Jurahn]

I've had the (mis)fortune this week of dealing with the LG customer service call centre in the Philippines, after our 50" LG plasma had a major fail. It's just over 4 years old, so of course it's out of warranty, but I'm pretty peeved that it's failed so soon considering the amount we paid for it and that it's only used a few hours a week. The search function to find a repair/service provider on the LG website wasn't working, so rang customer service. The woman I spoke to refused to give me the info and said she needed to book the job with the service provider herself. I don't know what the point was of registering all the purchase details, serial number etc on the LG website at the time we bought it (and all the info on that and the other LG products we've bought is still there on my account when I managed to get into it later), because obviously their call centre does not have access to any of it and I had to provide every single detail, having to spell out names, address, model number etc - then when I said I'd just have to pop into the adjoining room to get the serial number which would take me all of about 20 seconds, she asked me to call back when I had it! Er, NO I don't think so. Luckily hubby was home and I stayed on the phone whilst he got the serial number. I'm sure if I left the phone, she would have hung up.

I had to explain the problems with the TV at least four times, as she couldn't seem to understand what the issues were - she then put me on hold for a while and came back and said to try a factory reset and then to ring them back after I'd done that if it didn't work. She was rather thrown when I told her we'd already done that (twice) and it had made no difference and then she finally told me she'd booked the job and would put me through to "our technician" (i.e. a service/repair centre in Perth). I explained that it was a public holiday here in WA and most businesses were closed so she probably wouldn't be able to do so, but she insisted, so I then spent a considerable time on hold whilst she tried - obviously unsuccessfully - to put the call through. She came back and said she'd "left a message" and that someone would call me within 24 hours. Whilst I was waiting, I'd managed to get the search working on the LG website, and had found there was a service/repair centre in the next suburb. I asked if she could confirm that she had booked the job with that particular service centre (which is the only one anywhere near us), but she refused again to give me the name of the company and just kept repeating that someone would call me within 24 hours. I read the details off the website and asked - again - if she could confirm the job had been booked with that company, and she finally, and very reluctantly, said it had been.

Needless to say, now 3 days later and no one has called, so looks like I'll have to contact the company myself anyway.

Just an update on this one (no longer able to edit the original post) - 4 days later, still no call, so I called the repair company myself. Turned out they HAD received the information from the LG call centre, but no indication as to why they hadn't bothered to contact us in the days since. Their office/workshop is literally 5 minutes from where we live, so I thought they'd be able to come and at least have a look at it. No, they needed it at their workshop (fair enough, as they had to test it), so we could either drop it down to them - not an option as a 50" TV isn't exactly a piece of cake to move and we didn't have a vehicle we could safely transport it in anyway - or they would send someone to pick it up ... at the cost of $110 (for a 5 minute trip) and then a further $110 for them just to have a look at the TV and assess the problem. So $220 before we could even have any idea what was wrong with it - and I was pretty peeved that they hadn't even bothered to follow up on the service call that had been booked with them in the first place. And to be honest, they didn't seem that interested in the job anyway!!

So we googled local TV repairs, found a mobile service operated by an older guy who had been in the business for years and seemed pretty genuine - he came to look at the TV, took it away with him, found one of the boards had gone so replaced it, and had the TV back to us 3 days later, all for a cost of just under $300. So great customer service from a owner-operated local business, we'd definitely use him again and have recommended him to several other people as well.

 

[harvyk]

If they knew anything about marketing they would realise that a happy customer is a returning customer.

That might be true, however a repeat customer is not worth a lot to a business if the cost of keeping them happy outweighs the value of any potential repeat business from them.

Whilst it's all nice to say "our customers come first" in marketing material, let's face it there are many successful businesses out there which have nothing but contempt for their customers, for example Ryanair.
A persons happiness with a product is only one aspect in the overall decision making process, other factors can include convenience, price and familiarity (aka better the devil you know).

As far as a business is concerned (and I myself have done this), sometimes there are customers which you deliberately let go, because the drain they have on the business is more than you get back from them.

 

[annagalvin]

Customer service died over 40 years ago. Trying to find someone to serve you in any shop is a disaster. Technology has certainly advanced but at what a price.

 

[kezzakawasaki]

Some companies appear to focus less on customer service.

One of my pet hates is waiting and waiting for my simple call to progress in the queue. Simple solution would be to hire more call centre people?

This is why we love iiNET as our ISP - when you call up they let you know how long the wait is, you leave your number, and they call you back. The website even lists the current approximate wait time Contact iiNet - Customer Service - iiNet Australia

Such a simple idea, but they are such a pleasure to deal with. And their call centre is in Perth, always most helpful....

 

[clazman]

You know that they run a call center out of Africa?

I love the comments people say that Westnet customer service is better than iinets...... they use the same people

I have been a customer of iinet for 17+ years, and highly recommend them...... would be nice if they offered a discount for all the years with them