Customer Relations?
Do you think that Corporate America really has a handle on what the term Customer Relations truly means? I for one actually know that most of them don’t have a clue!!
If any of you have taken the time lately to visit some of more prominent brand web sites lately, you might have wandered across a new category they are calling; Customer Responsibility. And to this point I actually peeled away a few layers of the onion and called a few corporate offices asking to speak with the VP or Director of this novel administration. After contacting the likes of General Mills, General Motors, Allstate and Farmers Insurance; wouldn’t you know that not a single operator attendant even knew that this department existed within their organization. Well I am one persistent dude and I don’t stop until I get at least 5 gate-keepers begging me to go away and what is so central here is the fact that I wasn’t even calling to complain about anything, instead I wanted to compliment these companies for their consumer consciousness. And so I wanted to reach out and report my findings because I have now experienced for myself just how challenging it is to actually SPEAK TO A LIVING & BREATHING individual with a title of authority. This exercise has taught me that most of these behemoth businesses don’t know JACK about customer service. They don’t really care if the consumer likes or dislikes their product and strategically design their barriers of entry to make it almost impossible to learn. Heaven forbid that consumers actually have serious problems to report because, well, when they come knocking on the Corporate front door most times they are going to find that NO ONE IS HOME!
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Speaking to a living and breathing individual with some level of responsibility takes a lot of persistence because they don’t necessarily want to hear either the bad or the good. Be thankful you reached a human that spoke intelligible English, which is one of my two pet peeves about “customer service”. This is particulalry true in technical support issues How am I supposed to resolve a problem talking with someone who’s English is so poor and accented that they have to repeat themselves over and over?
My other pet peeve about so called customer service, is the inability to speak to an operator or receptionist at most large companies. First you have to wade through a English/Spanish/Martian automated response; then through the if your “concern” is set of 6 or 7 numbers only to finally get to a cusomer service line that tells you that all operators are busy, and you are left hanging for 10 minutes or more or are disconnected. Then when talking to an individual you can hear the background converesations of employees who are obviously not on the line. Then told when you ask to speak with a manager get told either I am the supervisor or there isn’t anyone here in that capacity because this is a call center.
Get real and smell the coffee corporate America, people buy your products, at least treat us with a modicum of respect.
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