"Customer Care" a little less "care" these days
...an emergency getting out of hand.
Business...we, the customers have an emergency: Your customer care department lost their vision to care for customers.
I just had the following situation
End of last week I phoned the customer care call center of my mobile network, to add 2GB of data to my package to get me through the weekend. It was done at a cost of R249 (approx $19)
I just phoned the customer care call center to add more data on which I was given promotional pricing of 4GB at a cost of R199 (approx $15) So today I got twice the amount of data at a much cheaper price.
The promotional pricing is aparently a standard thing, but the customer care department is NOT at mandate to offer such pricing to customers.
Oh yeah right, when did offering one customer cheaper pricing from other customers become a fair business practice, and in this case it was the same customer.
Business discourage customers from using customer care
So I would assume that the philosophy behind "customer care" is to care for a company's customers. It isn't rocket science.
- However, for the last year or so, I realised that businesses have a very dragged-out voice recording, taking you through a mesh of customer options in order to aparently get you to the correct "helping hand". Why should it take me 1-1.5 minutes of listening to pre-recorded messages, choosing my path through a network of options, before I get to speak to an operator?
If I announce my "care" for someone, wouldn't I respect that person's or customer's very scarse resource named "TIME" instead of discouraging users to use the customer care service?
- Oh yes, and when I get to the operator, why does it seem like they have been schooled to provide script-like solutions, instead of first understanding a customer's problem before trying to solve it?
Shouldn't a customer care representative be skilled to offer the "CARE" as inherently promised by their title?
NOT ALL IS BAD - A customer care service that DOES work
I get the feeling that social media has become one VERY effective tool in the hands of business, and for this I need to compliment business.
With my situation above, I actually polite-fully ended my call with the customer care operator after which I lodged a complaint with the mobile network's social media team. I received a call-back within 2 minutes.
NO listening to a pre-recording trying to find my way through a mesh of options. Sitting back with a coffee in my hand was much more comfortable.