A friend of mine made an interesting observation the other day – customer service has fallen by the wayside, especially when it comes to electronic interaction. We’ve all bemoaned the illiterate writings of teens and texting (really, how much more effort does it take to text your instead of ur?) but this recent trend of short, terse and often flippant response via e-mail is disturbing.
Why does the relative anonymity of e-mail correspondence seem to mean it’s perfectly acceptable to be rude or half-hearted or give the impression that you (the customer) are a bother to them (the retailer)? Is it a lack of training on the part of the employer? Is it the informality of the Web? It’s hard to tell, but once lost, a customer is even harder to retrieve.
As with anything, there are companies who excel at customer service whether it is in person, on the phone or in an e-mail discussion such as Southwest Airlines, Apple and Edward Jones. But even more interesting is the number of top-rated companies who are smaller, privately held or family-run. They’ve built their successes one satisfied customer at a time and it shows.
Perhaps the days of “the customer is always right” are indeed long gone, but is it too much to hope that we can expect a return to courteous, prompt service? Depending on Internet connection speed, of course.
-- Jennifer
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