To wonder what changed about customer service?

[Whatafabulousoaktree]

Thirty years ago I worked for an insurance company in their call centre. A constant driving force throughout the business was 'how can we delight the customer?' and 'how have we exceeded the customers' expectations today?'.
Literally no one thinks like this today. What has caused the change to a quite overt attitude of 'like it or lump it'? Companies don't seem to care how long you wait for things, how difficult the 'customer journey' or how poor your service experience...but why is it that they no longer think that retaining and impressing customers is worth their while?

I think customer service fell when working from home started. Dogs in the background, trying to sort child and work, less productivity.

I agree op customer service fir many, not all, organisations has fallen.

MBA types in management

They only see customer service as a cost

People behave badly and have done since covid.

Violence and racism towards hospital staff have increased massively over the last few years and I imagine its the same in most people facing roles.

Staff then get naturally defensive and less focused/invested in making people feel satisfied.

Companies outsourcing their customer service hasn’t helped, if everyone worked for the same company it’s more of a pull together. In my early career I did customer service, more account management, but we worked hard to gain customers trust and good rapport. I still work at the same company in a different field, company outsourced customer service, the quality is dire and I feel sorry for our customers who put millions of £££ our way being subjected to the service they now get. The outsourcing company don’t give a shit, it’s more about how many cases they can close each day.

For me, the bad customer service in call centres starts when trying to get through. When you have a service or product for which you want to speak to the company, you first have to try and find the contact number on the website. A lot of times this is almost impossible and I end up Googling the contact number even though I am looking at the company's website. They don't want you to call so they make it as difficult as possible. That annoys me from the get-go. Then, when you call the number, you get a long list of different possible choices as well as being asked to tell things to the automated voice that you end up repeating to the person you finally get through to anyway. Blood pressure is pretty high at this point.
In my general experience, when I finally get through i find the people helpful. But the initial process to actually get to talk to someone is stressful. And that is the fault of the company. They want you to pay for their product and service and not contact them again.

No we used to have small shops and small shops need repeat customers if they piss off "nan" they piss off the entire family and when you have large families living in one area that's a lot of customers that also have friends in the same area

My nan had 6 sons they had wives children more than one marriage in some cases and for a long time we all lived within the same two streets (even some of the exes) being unkind to one family member would have had significant economic impact back in the day not so much anymore

I used to work in customer service years ago. It was a good job, people were reasonable to deal with, I never had anyone shouting, swearing or ranting at me. Now it's an awful job - no one chooses to go into customer service these days, so you get demotivated, unhappy people trying to help people with totally unreasonable expectations. It's par for the course to be shouted at, told that 'I'm going to report you, you're going to lose your job' etc etc. People don't care about how they come across as long as they get the result they are demanding.

I think there are two sides to this and both work against customer service.
One is there are fewer people doing a role now, staff put under increasing pressure for not great pay. Lots of rules to get staff into trouble.

Secondly customers are so much more demanding and so much more likely to complain. We, as customers, used to wait for things - parcels etc now we want it next day. If Amazon can do it why can't some person on eBay. We have increased our expectations massively.

Royal Mail friends are not currently paid overtime. If they are having to hide a number of parcels, in your back garden, in the shed, try the neighbours etc; they run out of time and therefore letters are not delivered. Management have not increased the about of time posties work, but we have, since Covid massively changed what we as customers use the service for. In more rural areas it is often the postie who is delivering your Amazon parcel.

Once shops weren't open on a Sunday, once we had half-day closing. Now it's all 24 hour and open Boxing Day. I imagine most shop workers are just knackered.

Well that's lazy bs. I have had pretty great 'customer service' from plenty of public bodies over the years and consistently poor service from all sorts of private companies.

30 years ago customers didn't shout, scream, threaten and attempt to record conversations to upload them to Tiktok. Maybe the occasional horrible customer but a quick reminder that the Police/security will be called if they don't calm down was enough. Now there is no Police/security.

I loved my job and really wanted to help people but got out after one horrible customer too many.

Some processes are deliberately made difficult. To fix our Samsung TV for example, DH spent 35 minutes getting through an a automated queue to find they won't speak to DH even with the password. I stop work to authorise her to speak to DH. Then she says she needs to read some GDPR thing, so he has to bring her back to me. It went on and on and on; we leave her talking for 5 minutes while I work and DH stomps up and down the room. Eventually she agreed to listen to the problem. Then she says to reset the TV, which DH assured her he had already tried twice already but she says must happen next, she needs to read ME another lengthy script, DH won't do, so she starts again but this time wants to check we are listening, stops DH when he says yes and says she'll start again to make sure I'm listening. Then she gets to the end and says something isn't working on her end, so we'll need to call back later. 1.5 HOURS wasted. To do NOTHING. Aaaaargh.

I find customer service to be variable these days. One of the issues is that companies do not invest in training in the way that they used to. Training budgets are easy down and lots of roles demand people "with experience" that were traditionally trained up. The biggest impact I notice are restaurants and bars, where in many the young staff and foreign staff missed a few years of the usual learning opportunities due to covid, with turnover they simply don't understand how it used to be done. I do think it's actually started improving in the last year, but from a very very low level. If we consumers continue to only buy the cheapest items and to ignore bad service or bad reviews, then we perpetuate the view that this is ok. I suspect we need to wait for the next boom for attitudes to swing around and training will become all the rage.

It’s because the competition is just as bad, a race to the bottom. If firms lost customers in enough numbers, they’d improve their customer service. But when most firms are crap, customers either stay or just move around in a carousel.

Also customers are now expecting crap service, so they put up with it.

And it’s nothing to do with minimum wage, its attitude of staff and management. Lots of nmw workers provide a brilliant service so the ones who don’t have an attitude problem or an incompetence problem.

But it’s the same with public sector where there is no competition. Too many cs staff don’t care or are incompetent because they can get away with it due to crap management and knowing they have a captive audience in that an HMRC caller can’t take their business elsewhere, likewise a patient getting crap attitude from a gp receptionist, etc.

Has nobody mentioned lockdown yet?

Probably not the most important factor, but it certainly accelerated things. "We are experiencing extremely high call volumes, please wear a mask and observe social distancing on our premises" is still to be heard in many recorded messages.

30 years ago customer service was a lot better so frustrated customers didn’t have to resort to shouting etc. It works both ways.

Absolutely

Tell that to the utilities companies - private, but among the worst offenders

It’s because customers aren’t loyal any more. You could put loads of effort in to ‘delighting’ them, but if they can get what you offer for 10p cheaper somewhere else, they switch.
Technology and online businesses have made us all transient customers not worth fighting (or investing in) holding onto.

Covid played a big part. Companies realised that they could operate with way less staff and even though service levels dropped massively, customers still stayed. So they kept doing it even post-lockdown.

We book quite pricey holidays regularly, using the same online agency and always the same member of staff. He's done bespoke packages for us for years and great, friendly service.

The company has a "concierge service" that they encourage you to call with any queries; as we're about to go away this weekend, I called with a couple of queries on Thursday. To say the woman who dealt with me was surly would be an understatement.

Interestingly, our usual agent rang me about an hour later, to "check everything was OK". I'm certain he realised the snotty woman hadn't been exactly helpful!

I think customers have, perhaps, changed.

However, having noted the frustrating situation with car insurance, where you tend to have to look for new each year to get the lowest deals, it struck me that the change was probably driven by the observation that many customers simply find the cheapest or best deal and then renew without checking, thus the company that seemed best at first shafts the customer that doesn’t bother to check the next time it comes up.

Those insurance companies always give the best deals to attract in new customers and never bother to reward loyal customers, which I think demonstrates clearly they are interested in maximum profit and that is probably the pattern that drives it.

It seems an odd model, shafting your current customers to attract in new, and I do wonder if there is space for a different model, where it’s advertised that loyalty pays. Maybe there is and I haven’t found it, but I guess few people would be trusting enough nowadays to invest in a more expensive policy and hope it was true it would remain the same and thus be better in the long term.

That bastion of quality customer service, John Lewis, was going down the pan before Covid.
Had a horrible experience yesterday in another shop where I was just made to feel invisible and worthless, and when I left the staff simply didn’t care.

If you are paid to do a job you do it. If you don’t like the pay the time to address that is when you’re offered the job.

I agree, customer service seems to be a thing of the past for a lot of firms. It really amazes me now if I receive good customer service.

This is why organized unions can be useful for shop workers. The individual often does not have the power to pick and choose. I have watched various young people struggle to even get a response to job applications. Actually getting as far as an offer can take ages. They’re not really in a position to turn it down.

As mentioned further up most customer facing jobs are poorly paid for jobs which are not that enjoyable.
DD16 works at The Range for £.6.40ph. A lot of customers are very curt, hardly acknowledging her at best and some down right awful (she was called a whore the other day by a lovely lady). She will go out of her way to help the nice customers but why should she give great customer service to the latter?

Customer service is a thing of the past because many customers are obnoxious arseholes.

Exactly this. I don't need to know what I can do myself online, I am calling because what I want CAN'T be done online!
An annoying but new feature of live chats is a jaunty caveat about 'I am AI, I don't always get things right'. How did we get to a position when that was deemed acceptable for a customer services or helpline query? It's outrageous really.