Customer Service – Does it even exist?

Whatever happened to good ‘ol fashioned customer service?  When I was at school and just out of school I worked at Maccas and Boost Juice.  Both of which drummed into me fantastic customer service skills.  Basically treat your  customers well and they will keep returning and avoid giving them a reason to tell those 3 people about their bad experience.  So is this something that businesses have lost touch with in their training these days or is it really just something the newer generation don’t give two flying ducks about?

I am sure I embarrass my husband and friends sometimes when I voice my dissatisfaction at public places but you know what I don’t care!  Australia is an expensive place to live, eating out is expensive, shopping is expensive and we as customers pay dam good money for the products and services we purchase.

During the week I had a less than pleasant experience with a customer attendant at Optus Loganholme.  She could not even greet me with a hello, ask how I was or how she could help me, followed by an extremely cold demeanour because my phone is under my husbands name and therefore she couldn’t help me… no suggestions of what I needed to do to get assistance either.  I stormed out of the shop and made a whinging phone call to husband.

So off husband and I go today to Optus to get the info we needed with his verification.  This time the male service attendant was neither polite nor impolite just quite frankly uninterested.  Whilst getting the info we required we explained that we were thinking about moving to Vodaphone… Now I was expecting a sales save pitch.. “what are you unhappy with” ” how can we help you” etc etc… NOTHING Come on Optus we have been customers for at least 9-10 years now and your sales attendant is just going to let us walk out the door like that?

So off we trot to Vodaphone – who were much more on the ball with their service and sales assistance.  Only we find out we have to go back to Optus to get more info… greeted by yet another snotty nose 17 year old female who thinks her last shit she had before lunch don’t stink .. I exploded with “Are you all trained to be so rude”  To which she RUDELY responded with a justification of how she is not rude and is the nicest person working there blah blah blah – whatever happened to satisfying the customer?  Still no attempt to save us as customers .. 3 potential sales opportunities flushed down the dunny with their non smelling crap.

So as it turned out Vodaphone won our business, we got a much cheaper plan and I have a new iPhone 4 and left the store happy with the level of service and information provided.

I may sound like a snotty nose customer – the typical troublesome customer who always likes to complain but seriously it’s not hard to do your job.  You get paid well by your boss to do a job and if you don’t like it then get out you are not doing anyone, including yourself, any favors if you don’t like your job.  But even more so I wonder how business owners allow such poor representations of their business.  I get sometimes you get the odd young lass on a bad day but to have this experience in the same store with 3 different employees is simply not good enough.  The market is far to competitive to present your customers reasons on a silver platter to go elsewhere.  If you want sales to stay in your business or in your store and not go online you all need to pick up your game.  Why should I bother going in store when I can buy a cheaper item online and skip the shitty customer service experience.