I talked to five separate people at my bank in the last two weeks (three separate phone calls) before I found someone who could explain a few added charges on my checking account. And it drove me nuts.
The thing is, I sit near our customer service department at work, and I hear some of the calls they handle — I don’t envy that job. But from a customer’s point of view, calling a company to dispute a charge or get a service reactivated / fixed / changed is often a living nightmare.
- You have the hold function, which larger companies love to use. I get it, you’re busy. You’re a big company. Lots of people call you. You’re experiencing a larger call volume than usual. Your music is driving me nuts. During one phone call to my cable company, I just put the phone on speaker and went about my business — ate dinner, paid my bills, used the bathroom, etc. Might as well.
- You have the transfer. Those menus that ask you to press 1 for this, 2 for that, or 3 for the other thing? My issue never seems to fall neatly into any category, so I end up explaining my problem to two or three people before I talk to the right person.
- You have the pass-off. Closely related to the transfer, service reps do this when they try, but can’t answer your question. Sometimes when I get passed to three or four people, I think I’m living that Discover Card commercial where everyone is sitting in an office and handing the phone over to “Peggy.”
- You have the service appointment. This is my least favorite. I work the same hours as you (and the rest of America) do, how do you expect me to be home for a four-hour window in which you show up at your leisure?
In the end, I understand customer service is probably an incredibly frustrating, thankless job. Which is why I’d like to give a shout-out to the last woman I spoke to today at my bank. She was so helpful I wanted to give her a hug through the phone. Every question I had, she answered — she knew the answers! — and the call took less than five minutes.
So I can say, in my lifetime, I have had at least one good customer service experience. Here’s the question — has anyone else?!
You’re funny, Sarah! It took me at least a few hours to get in touch with a rep at DSW to inform them that I never received my shoes. The hold music has some sort of repetitive glitch that sounds like someone is answering, but they’re really not. I ended up hanging up after 40-plus minutes of waiting (several times) because I had to start work or live, etc. In the end, I had to call back by the 10th business day, when one can officially report lost or stolen shoes. After that, the refund was a cinch.
How about the online orders that have no phone number to call? You can wait forever to hear back from an email or fax, if you ever do hear back. It is like they almost say “find the answer for yourself”.
Yes! That glitch is real — Comcast has it too. And it’s more pronounced on speakerphone, so I continually jump at the phone every 30 seconds. I’ve never encountered a missing phone number though… that sounds like even more of a nightmare.