If your response to this is yes then this editorial is for you but if it is no then you may just want to move on.
For the records, I happen to resoundly believe that customer service is on the decline. Why do I believe this to be so? Here are my humble opinions.
- Companies are placing much more emphasis on reducing their costs rather than putting it on improving customer service. They seem to be hell bent on doing this and in so doing they are sacrificing good customer relations in favor of cost reduction. What they may be forgetting is this. Each time a customer has a bad experience with a customer service rep, chances are that they would not return to said company and even worse is that they would tell their friends and family and presto! There goes future revenue and the shrinking of a company’s database.
- Customer service training has and continues to decline and as a result present customer service reps are not equipped to provide such things as a sound knowledge of products and services being sold, how to handle customers with special needs, and how to react and/or proact towards customers and their questions.
- As they say, you often get what you pay for and if companies continue to believe that they can get away with it by paying their customer service reps low wages then guess what? The types of employees that would be attracted to these positions are those who will not stay with them for any length of time because they would be seeking to better their lives with better paying jobs and scope.
- Too many companies within the past decade have been allowed to establish their fleets of customer service reps outside of North America; primarily in India and as a result this has lead to customer reps whose first language is not English having to deal with customers whose first language is English. Or customers whose first language is anything but what is primarily spoken in India.
Cost reduction for companies, yes! The shortest end of the stick for customers, yes! My only wish is that we could find a way to rectify the widening customer dissatisfaction syndrome.