I want your guy's opinions on customer service.

This was brought up in another forum I'm on and I wanted your guys opinions. Without going into descriptive detail with names of companies and what they did, etc, I just want your opinion of retail companies in general.

Do you think that if a company made customer service #1, that they would make more money?

I ask because I work for a company that thrives on customer service. They make it a number one priority. We know we can't make everyone happy and we could lose customers, but we try our damnedest.

I feel like a lot of companies have lost their customer service skills. I almost feel that they are looking to lose customers by the way they treat people.

When you go into any business (i.e. Auto Parts, Electronics, Restaurant, Hardware, etc), do you expect good or descent customer service to help you with what you are looking for or purchasing? I'm talking friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful staff. I'm saying the waitress that keeps your drinks filled without you asking and realized one of your orders was wrong before you did. Or the guy at Lowes that will walk all the way to the section of an aisle to show and help you look for what you need. This is what I look for when I go out to purchase something.

The reason companies don't do it, is because as consumers we don't demand it.

Americans are too heavily focused on price, instead of value.

Customer service is job one, no question. I work in a heavily customer driven business, and I literally deal with them all day.

On the flip side though, is the customers that have come to learn that, and expect the moon when it's physically impossible to deliver. Case in point, I had a woman who expected us to be able to change something on her policy ( health insurance) because she felt it wasn't right. I told her flat out, we could not do what she asked (she didn't feel like paying her deductible, and thought we should just let it go because she paid it last year) and I flat told her that if she had an issue with it, her best bet would be to take it up with her employer ( who purchased the policy, set the deductible limits, and decided if/when it reset). I got yelled at for 15 minutes for my trouble. Lesson here? It's kinda like the racism thread over yonder. You expect one thing, you have to be willing to go with what goes into that. IE, don't be a berkeleying jackass to me when i'm trying to explain it to you. Sadly, not everyone gets what they want, but I can help you figure out what your options are. Like, not doing a bunch of heroin and going to rehab a million times so you don't have to pay all the money ever.

I think the general state of customer service in retail is totally down the crapper. That said, there are a few establishments that rise above the slime, and that's where I try to take most of my business. I find that as I get older, price becomes much less important, and good service more so.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

Yes, and here's a good example of it. My company doesn't sell retail, but puts a great deal of effort into customer service. I worked for this same company under a different name and with different owners that didn't care, and the company failed. We bought it and made customer service our top priority and now we are highly successful.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Do you think that if a company made customer service #1, that they would make more money?

Yes. I work in a retail environment, (bicycle shop), where the majority of our business comes from repeat customers, or people referred to us by existing customers. Without a doubt, prioritising customer service reaps greater profits.

I've also boycotted a local hardware store 'cos one cranky old guy who works there was rude and impatient. Now I go to the other hardware store in town.

I imagine it must be difficult for commission-based employees to strike that balance between friendly, knowledgeable and helpful without seeming pushy and overbearing, though.

I worked for a theatrical rental firm for 10 years.. we made customer service number 1 and survived (and thrived) one second rate, beaten up equipment when newer companies would come and go with new stuff.

the thing was.. the places knew we had E36 M3 equipment.. but they also knew that we would be there within half and hour to an hour with a replacement if it broke

In this day and age, Customer Service is always referred to, but rarely implimented. Sure you'll find the guys who still enjoy helping every customer they can, but for the most part, the mentality is "It's not my job" or "I don't get paid enough for this E36 M3".

On the flip side, you have customers who believe they are the center of the universe and NOTHING you do satisfies them. Customer Service doesn't mean that I have to sit here and let the customer treat me like absolute and total E36 M3. There are far more of these types of customers than you'd think. They are also the ones who DEMAND something for free and will try to say that the employee/company did something wrong and they must be compensated one way or another. You also have customers, who, no matter what you do and how far out of your way you go to help them and be as pleasant as possible, will absolutely slam you in a survey in which you're graded by customers.

As you can tell, I work in the CS industry. I work at a Ford dealership and we are constantly graded on Customer Service. Ford sends out surveys to customers and their scale is you either score 100%, or you score 0% and fail. If you're not graded 'Completely Satisfied' and are just graded 'Very Satisfied', then you fail.

Just as an example, I had a customer who called me at 9am and wanted his oil changed, tires rotated, and vehicle washed by noon. I told him we were extremely backed up and I would try, but couldn't gurantee I'd get it washed, but I'd do my best. He said that was fine, he just really needed the other stuff done as they were going on a trip. We went and picked the car up from their business, did all the work, and delivered it back to them at 11:59, but were unable to get it washed. They failed me on my survey for not washing it. That's $50 out of my pocket. That kind of E36 M3 makes me want to treat them like shiny happy people.

It's really hard to continue to be nice and happy and everything when you have people like this darkening your doorstep. The attitude, I guess, is one of entitlement that really gets me. The great customers are usually those in the same type of business. They know what you're doing and how busy you are and how much you're trying. The worst ones are those who get some sort of joy out of treating you like crap. It seems the worst ones are becoming far more common.

Just my $0.02

I never expect good customer service. End of story. When I get it, I am pleasantly surprised. It also seems that places that DO have good customer service tend to thrive, and the atmosphere in general is better.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with large nation corporations and the stupid ass policies they create that make no sense, which is the problem with replacing mom and pop stores with them. The large corporation cares about one thing: more stakeholder value. Even if that means only having one person on the cash till at 9 o'clock at night, when there is ALWAYS a lineup 10+ people long.

In reply to Conquest351:

Wait, am I parsing this correctly? Ford dings you $50 because the customer only said "very satisfied"?

I don't think not being able to wash the car should've gotten you dinged, but there's no way that the customer had any notion that marking you second-to-top was going to have repercussions for you, is there? Hell, depending on how the things is phrased, one might assume the maximum-awesome checkbox on the survey is reserved for being blown away by performance of a miracle.

Again, it sounds like you did everything you could and had earned a "completely satisfied", but my beef in this case would be with Ford's batE36 M3 system of using half-informed customer feedback as an excuse to take away funds...

As many companies allow their CS to fail to "save costs" I hope that the companies that maintain CS will be successful in their place. Like someone else mentioned, as I age, I am willing to spend a little more for better service.

Just a few weeks ago I was staying at a resort with a group of friends. I went down to the restaurant to join some of the friends for breakfast. This was as their breakfast service was winding down. There were 6 other tables occupied when we got there, 3 other's when we left. And at least 12-15 empties. I told the one server that we were just going to join our friends when she tried to seat us across the restaurant from them. We pulled chairs and place settings from another table and proceeded with the buffet. Another waitress came over and stated that we should have sat at another table and not joined our friends. I explained that we were at this restaurant to spend time with our friends.

Two more times she decided to stop by our table to tell us that we shouldn't have joined our friends at this table. She did not get a tip and while I enjoyed the rest of my time at the resort, I will NEVER eat in this restaurant again.

The problem with those questionnaires where they ask questions on 1-5 scale where 1 is poor and the 5 is excellent or amazing or whatever. People get dinged if you don't rate them a 5.

Now, I consider a score of 3 on that scale to be "normal" customer service. I don't give out 5s unless they truly are exceptional (go out of their way to accommodate my schedule/needs, notify me if they're behind with something to make up for it, give me tips on how to avoid an issue in the future, etc.) I can only think of 2 or 3 services in the past year that have given me a "5" scale customer service in the past year in ANYTHING. Only one of those was automotive related.

In reply to Ransom and Datsun1500,

Yeah, you get a bonus check for having outstanding customer service. You're supposed to retain a score of at least 80% and you get a bonus check. It's damn near impossible for that to happen. The scoring system is made so that you're destined to fail. We go over the survey with each and every customer and let them know we are graded and kind of coach them what to do. We're not supposed to, but it's really the only way. I always say, "Our goal is completely satisfied scores across the board, if for any reason you can't grade me that way, here's my card. Please call me and let me know what I can do for you."

We all (Ford service advisors) know it's a flawed system. We all complain about it. It's never going to change.

If I was to wash it and deliver it 3 mins late, I'd get dinged for delivering it late. The point is, we're not staffed to pick up and deliver. We are in a small town and it's a pretty spread out rural area at that. Living 20-30 miles out of town isn't uncommon. We traveled 10 miles each way to deliver this damn car and it put me behind on the other customers waiting for their vehicles. It's a loose - loose situation.

We will also get dinged by people unsatisfied with the vehicle itself. We did our job, the customer doesn't like the steering wheel on his Fusion. Not my fault, but I still get dinged on the Overall Satisfaction score. It's rediculous.

I don't think I have ever purchased ANYTHING based on customer service. I usually order online and expect to get the parts when I get them. I'm never in a hurry to receive anything, and I never NEED it immediately. If I have a question, I expect it to be answered in a timely manner, but usually do the research beforehand, so i don't ask many questions.

I work in customer service, and even I don't want to talk to me. it sucks.

If you want to see the flip side of customer service, look at airlines. They fail spectacularly on a regular basis, and consider simply delivering you to your destination at some point to be worth a gold star. My wife travels for a living, taking an average of four flights a week, and she's seen a lot of very poor customer service. After listening to her rantings, I've put some of the lessons into practice at my own job

Maroon92, you say you've never purchased anything based on customer service. But that's not really true. You stated that you expect a response in a timely manner, that's a measure of customer service right there. If there's a problem, you expect your online vendor to take care of it. You expect some communication about your order status. If it's all handled well, you don't notice it. But I'll bet you notice if it's not handled well.

Conquest351 wrote: Just as an example, I had a customer who called me at 9am and wanted his oil changed, tires rotated, and vehicle washed by noon. I told him we were extremely backed up and I would try, but couldn't gurantee I'd get it washed, but I'd do my best. He said that was fine, he just really needed the other stuff done as they were going on a trip. We went and picked the car up from their business, did all the work, and delivered it back to them at 11:59, but were unable to get it washed. They failed me on my survey for not washing it. That's $50 out of my pocket. That kind of E36 M3 makes me want to treat them like shiny happy people.

That anecdote says more about how needlessly stupid your company's survey policy is than anything else. If the results are interpreted so strictly that anything but perfection fails, what you're really telling your employees is; when things get difficult, don't even bother trying. The WORST is when the dealer/store/whatever flat out tells you that anything lower than a perfect score hurts them. How do I know if that's true, or if they're just trying to artificially boost their scores over other outlets? If anything, that sort of pandering makes me much less satisfied with the transaction, because I feel like the customer's input is either intentionally being marginalized, or worse, misinterpreted and used as leverage by some dickwad corporate entity to screw over their employees.

I think when given a choice, the bulk of people consistently pick price over service or quality (wally world, big box stores...). There are exceptions and folks who will choose quality. For the companies who serve quality over price - it tends to pay off in a big way - i.e. a guy I know started the Ritz Carlton hotels - staggeringly good service - he built a really strong luxury brand and cashed out big when Sheraton came knocking (who in turn have fallen down on maintaining the brand standards they paid dearly for). Even at the Ritz, they never went for 100% satisfaction - What they learned is that you can get to about 97% top box satisfied. The last 3% will break you so you manage to your brand - who you say you are. Not all customers are a match and sometimes you have to fire the customer.

As far as the automotive surveys - I had a jeep guy basically tell me to fill in top box scores so he could get paid. As a customer, that was a quick way to annoy me. I'll make up my own mind how to complete a satisfaction survey - not my fault if it is a flawed process or not a sincere quality tool.

Today is a prime example.

I have 2 technicians at Ford required educational seminars. One is my lead Transmission tech and he's at school learning about the new transmission systems on the 2011 and 2012 Ford vehicles. My other tech is a new guy we are grooming to be a main line technician. He's going through the initial Ford training. Both are gone all week. This means I'm down to one diesel/line tech, one interior/electronics/trim tech, and 2 oil change guys.

Every customer today I've been telling them I'm short handed and give me some time with their vehicles. I'm over estimating time by at least an hour. They're busting their asses back there and getting things done. I'm turning them out early and STILL getting yelled at for taking too long.

Can't win...

I've always had a fantasy about working for a company that acually gives a berkeley about their employees.

There is data on this called Kano analysis.

The issue is at what point is customer service expected? Not the B.S. "we always expect customer service." The actual expectation of customer service. Kind of the difference of Wal-Mart vs Ruth Chris Steak house. One has the expectation to be as little hindrance as possible the other it is demanded to be perfect. Which is required for your business. What is the return?

The survey's are another thing. I rarely give a perfect score on a survey. I am not trying to be as ass just precise and accurate. Also on surveys that are a 1-10 or 1-5 you can not get precise data. 1-7 is the only scale a human can resolute to. (if anyone wants more data on this ask.)

To answer your question, yes, customer service has gone out the window in most industries, but in the end, has anyone changed their shopping habits to fix this? It is the same reason we don't have a third political party in this country. If all the berkeley wads would stop thinking "I am throwing my vote away" Then they would vote some one else in.

Personally, I look for the cheapest price from whom ever I can tolerate. I also vote for whom I want.

I just got done reading the book, "Raving Fans." Its about client service and a lack there of. Good service can still be found, but its few and far between. I actually had a good experience buying my last car. I bought a used Ford at a Honda dealer and they have been really good about checking back with me about my satisfaction. With surveys, a company should never offer anything to receive favorable scores. That is just a bribe, plain and simple.

I have also found that customer service is alive and well in small or local business. For example, I love pizza. I usually order pizza once a week. I was a Papa Johns, or Domino's guy before a small pizza shop opened up a few miles away. I was on that side of town and decided to try it. I walked in, and everyone said hello and introduced themselves. I ordered a pizza to-go and sat at a table waiting. While I was waiting, the staff chatted me up about sports, the local area (they were really new) and other stuff. I was most surprised when they brought me over a soda and some garlic knots, just to ease my waiting time, which was no longer than 15 mins or so. It was a really nice experience, so I went back the next week. They remembered my name and sure enough, brought food for me while I waited. Overall, their prices might not be as cheap as whatever special Domino's is having, but I will pay an extra buck to support a local business and to feel like a valued customer. So if you are ever in Clayton NC, visit Pizza King.

I don't think true customer service is represented by the initial contact.

Customer service is what happens after you mess up.

My last employer was "The Regions #1 Rated Hyundai Dealer" according to the Customer Service Index poll. The problem is they are that way because IF you can't give them a perfect 10 on CSI they want you to let the service manager know, who ends up giving them a bunch off their bill to appease them for a 10. Now the issue is that customers have caught on to this and threaten to use the "CSI discount" every time, meanwhile management would not back up the service writers when we were TRYING to save the company money and improving CSI. My case for point is as follows. We had a customer come in a month ago and needed both left side wheel bearings on a 125k mile 2007 Elantra. TECH DAVE replaced the very loose front at that time and scheduled the rear for Monday of this week (obviously not this week as this whole deal happened two months ago. The customer returned and I processed the paperwork and sent the job to the back with a copy of the previous estimate. An hour and a half later the parts department calls and asks how I want "this axle shaft billed?" "What axle shaft?" "To replace the one Dave damaged when doing the bearing." "Dave's doing a rear wheel bearing." "Are you sure?" "AWWW FUDGE... WHAT DID HE DO?!?!?" I tell the service manager, go back to see the damage and the first thing the tech says to me is "You never said REAR WHEEL BEARING!" I held up the RO and replied "I TYPED IT!" The Manager says "I am not paying for this, you need to figure this out!" to which I replied "You need to have Dave pay for it then, because I am not and the customer isn't." "YOU deal with it, and don't think they are getting a rental out of me too!"

The dealer ended up paying for the whole bill and the rental after I went above the Service Manager AND Service Directors heads on this matter. I think it eventually cost me the job but I no longer caredto be associated with them.

madmallard wrote: I don't think true customer service is represented by the initial contact. Customer service is what happens after you mess up.

Exactly.

Keith wrote:

madmallard wrote: I don't think true customer service is represented by the initial contact. Customer service is what happens after you mess up.

Exactly.

Most people are ALWAYS happy to take your money, especially if they can only half-ass deliver in return