I have always been one of those people who looks down my snub nose at customers who call in to berate employees on deficiencies in the product or the solution they’ve been sold. I know I have this attitude because of the year I spent programming pagers for Pagenet, where dozens of high-strung physicians would call in to screech over why their pagers weren’t working on airplanes, or near bodies of water, or under a pile of takeout boxes in the resident’s lounge and various and sundry locations of stop-gap service leading to a feeling of having been “wronged”. On top of this, my mother works in sales for a financial institution and it’s safe to say that nothing riles people up more than the impression that their money is being mishandled. It never fails to amaze me how they’re willing to take it out on a sales associate but keep their cool around a manager or VP. I can’t think of a single instance where I’d say my mother has been in the wrong-for the most part, the wrath directed towards her results from the incompetence of other individuals, a fundamental misunderstanding of the product, blustering intended to intimidate or corporate policy entirely out of her control. If she were bad at her job she wouldn’t be the #1 Financial Sales Associate in a wealthy state year after year after year with a loyal group of customers who insist only on speaking to her. I am one of those individuals who raises an eyebrow over how servers are treated.
Needless to say, I am not sympathetic to the tamasha produced by customers when minor details go awry.
How the high and mighty do fall. This morning I found myself on the phone 1 minute after a certain company opened for business in order to complain about service. Remarkably (considering how agitated I was yesterday) I managed not to raise my voice, but the anger was palpable to the representative on the line. Within 30 seconds I had threatened to authorise a chargeback on my credit card, submit a report to the Better Business Bureau and write up a negative blog post on my “Business Review Blog” (as I described it) that would end up on Google whenever the name of the organisation was typed in to a search engine.
This morning I woke up upset. I ate my oatmeal with tears in my eyes. Over a customer service complaint.
Granted, this isn’t just any customer service complaint. The company I’m dealing with is providing a service that has a direct impact on my career. They are the best and most well-known organisation for the service they are providing me. On top of which, they are very, very, very expensive. Considering the level of incompetence I’ve dealt with since I signed up with them, I would have cut the contract and requested a chargeback for the exorbitant sums they charged me weeks ago. However, I have reviews of their services and positive outcome from friends and colleagues. Moreover, an investigation into their profile at the Better Business Bureau revealed that while they have received complaints, they have made reparations and maintain a reasonable rating for reputability. So I was not prepared to cut my ties. I just wanted to agitate so they’d do what I paid them to do.
I’m sitting here right now, my nerves still tingling but practicing my Buddhist Breathing Exercises so as to avoid Early Onset Yuppie Thrombo Syndrome, wondering if these reactions are purely American , purely related to my profession, purely related to the fact that I’m an ***hole, purely related to the price of the service or unconnected to anything except the fact that my career is important to me and I am hinging my hopes for relief and much-needed change on the service provided by this organisation. More to the point, I’m wondering if the American consumer finds the confidence to agitate for immediate change and better service because of the business or social culture in this country.
There are plenty of capitalist countries all over the world. Additionally, many former communist regimes have now moved to a free market economy. How many of them respond to service complaints in the manner of American businesses? How do their customers respond to disappointment? Does the quality of the service correspond to the length of time the country has had a free market economy? Does the salary paid out to service employees determine their competence and performance? Is there a proportional relationship between the importance of the service or the amount paid for the service and the importance the consumer places on perfection or near-perfect execution of the product or service?
Common knowledge has it that when Americans go abroad to Europe they receive poor customer service. Americans are generally chided to be aware of the difference in cultures, the difference in the economies and not to comment on the fact that they are being charged for tap water and stand in queues for 70 90 minutes. Europeans are not responsive to our babyish demands, we are told. The reason is either that they are a more evolved species of humanity, who, after pillaging the third world during Victorian times and funding their industrial revolutions on the blood, sweat and tears of places like India and East Timor, have risen to a plane of moral and cultural superiority where they exist in a yoga-dharma state of internal bliss (European viewpoint), or that their blood flows with the scabarous and lazy platelets of communism to have completely undone years of evolution and basic survival instincts and they wouldn’t work if they were stuck on a California strawberry internment camp farm and the very survival of their first-born depended on picking 1000 baskets of strawberries by the end of the day. What do people do when faced with disappointment over services rendered? What about countries like China or India? India, especially, was historically notorious for it’s lumbering bureaucratic structure, high levels of corruption and complete indifference to customer displeasure. Have they incorporated any sense of customer service into their business culture?
But think about it really. Sure the Frog at that French Restaurant may not have been as polite to you as you would have liked, but can you really say you got stellar service at Walmart? And the New Deal notwithstanding, the concept of a market free of almost any restraints has been woven into the fabric of the US economy long before Sarkozy came to power but I’d wager your average American would say that he or she deals with incompetence and poor service on a daily basis, in spite of the number of options and competition that exists.
I think for the average individual, the amount of rage produced by poor service is directly proportional to the cost of the product/service and importance it holds for something very important in his or her life. I am happy that I live in a free market economy and I do think it promotes better service but I’m not convinced that the free market is the end all and be-all of consumer satisfaction. There has to be some magic formula somewhere, of economic structure to benefits paid-the golden ratio for stellar service.
When you find it, can you please email it to my recruiters?
