WHAT HAPPENED TO CUSTOMER SERVICE?

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I'm just wondering if what I had to go through is getting to be the norm or just an anomaly with this one.

The maker of my CPAP machine has a web site that I access each day in order to see how I slept the night before. I access that information through an account that has my email address as the user name. My email provider changed the domain for my email and so I sent a notice that my email was going to change using the maker's email port. Then the email provider went kaput, and I couldn't access my account. So I tried to contact the machine supplier again to change to another email address and didn't get any response after 2 messages.

By this time the situation is getting critical as I had an appointment with my sleep doctor in 2 days. So I thought I would call the machine supplier and talk to somebody and get my email address changed again so I could access my account. The trouble was, nowhere on the main web site was any phone number. After a long time I found a phone number in a linked Terms and Conditions Agreement. I tried calling and repeatedly got bounced around and off by the answering system. After repeated attempts, I finally reached a human being, who sounded like a young man.

I then proceeded to tell the young man about my problem and that I needed to talk to somebody to fix the problem with my account. His response was I had to send an email through the web site. I told him I had done that twice and nobody responded. His response again was I had to send an email through the web site. By this time I am getting the feeling that he was trying to brush me off but I was not going to hang up the phone after spending so much time trying to find a human being to talk to. So I finally asked, "Are you telling me that in this whole company there is not a single human being that I can talk to who can resolve my problem?" and after a response that I can't remember now I said, "Sir, please connect me with a supervisor who has the authority and the ability to resolve my problem" and he connected me with a lady who couldn't have been more helpful and got my problem resolved.

The upshot is that I spent a considerable amount of time in an uphill battle to talk to a human being in order to get a significant problem resolved under a tight deadline. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I worked in a service position and it would never have occurred to me to treat an inquiry from one of my agents the way I was treated. Or am I just being an old dinosaur?
 
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I am sure there is good reason, bit more than customer service, I would be concerned that I need to consult the internet to know how I slept.
 
Went to J.C. Penney's yesterday to purchase a mattress cover. Spent over 15 minutes trying to find what I wanted/needed and saw no clerk to assist me. I finally chose one and then went looking for a clerk to ring me up. Again, found no one, and finally went back to Customer Service where I was able to complete the sale.


Last time I go to Penney's. No wonder they are going under, just like Sears.:mad:
 
"What happened to customer service?"

That horse has left the barn. Good customer service is now the exception, not the rule.

GS

The horse not only left the barn, but they cut him up for gourmet dog food, razed the barn, and paved over the whole shebang. It is so bad that I feel almost giddy whenever I call and actually get something that resembles what used to be just common, ordinary customer service. :rolleyes:
 
The horse not only left the barn, but they cut him up for gourmet dog food, razed the barn, and paved over the whole shebang. It is so bad that I feel almost giddy whenever I call and actually get something that resembles what used to be just common, ordinary customer service. :rolleyes:


I have to agree. It has gotten to the point that me and the Missus are willing to pay for good customer service.

GS
 
It has gotten to the point that me and the Missus are willing to pay for good customer service.
And that explains why customer service went south; we want cheap, and people cost money. Labor costs have increased at a higher rate than technology, so customer service gets more expensive in relation to the product sold (cpap machine).
 
Soon enough you will walk up to where the customer service desk used to be and there will be Mr. Kiosk, who will handle (or not ;)) all of your CS needs without any human intervention at all. This will likely consist of crediting your card, prorata, of course, after you throw whatever you're dissatisfied with down the stainless steel chute-to-nowhere. Automation will save us all money! And don't be in any hurry for your partial refund. :D
 
The masses will not pay for quality customer service. Plain and Simple.

I hope the pendulum swings back the other direction at some point, but I have my doubts...
 
The masses will not pay for quality customer service. Plain and Simple.
It's more than that, though. When labor was cheap, human service was worth paying for. But with the cost of labor so high, human service becomes that much more expensive.

But the flip side of the coin is that our wages are also up. To get back to lots of personal service, we'd have to all go back to 1930s wage levels, when it was cheap to hire extra store clerks for customers.
 
This is one time customers are not to be blamed. It is bottom line of corporations. NO BS about wages being too high when corporate profits at are all time highs. Bankruptcy is due to greed and mismanagement of product and sales. Wages are up yet much lower. How is that you ask? We NEED many more things in todays world to function. This thread is an example! A cpap machine was unheard of 40 years ago. Sleep apnea was not diagnosed.
 
Back in the 1930s high unemployment meant employers could be very fussy in who they hired and could expect people to show up for work when they were need-and scheduled. And the tax bite was MUCH lower so even modest wages went a LOT further.
I recall an article in the Business Section of the New York Times some years ago on the decline of selling as an occupation, a reader pointed out that today sales people do not receive commissions and are basically just cashiers, and the corporate mentality is they can always find someone else. And during my brief experience in working in retail years ago, I met NO
"managers" who really knew the merchandise and had people skills, especially when dealing with employees.
 
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