The Customer Service Experience

Imagine a scenario in which you signed up for a new social media platform a few weeks ago. You signed in the first day and logged out when you were done, everything was fine. A few weeks pass and you decide you want to log in to that platform once again, little did you know it would not be so easy. You typed in your information, and you keep getting a message telling you that your email or password is invalid. You are confused by this because you are sure you typed everything in correctly. Time goes by and you try every possible combination you could think of but no luck, you are not in. After multiple attempts all ending in failure, you decide you need some help. Time to contact customer service. This can go one of two ways, either you get the help you need to sign in and get back to what you were doing. Or you possibly have the worst time of your life and lots of wasted time. 

 During the good customer service experience, you call, and they pick up. You proceed to tell them your problem and they give you a quick solution and help you through the process. If you go along with what they tell you everything will go smoothly, and your day might even be better than when it started. 

During a bad customer service experience, you call, and nobody answers. Or you immediately get put on hold. You do not mind waiting, because you can just do something in the meantime or wait a few minutes until somebody picks up. You are still waiting, and the hold music is getting on your nerves, but luckily someone finally picked up. You tell them your problem and they tell you they do not work in that department so they will transfer you to the right department. You wait again for what feels like an eternity, thinking about whether you should cut your losses or continue so you can see the good ending, but you make the mistake of waiting even longer. You started the call when the sun was up, but now you see the moon. You give up and feel an empty void in the place where your hope once was.  

It happens to the best of us, but what could have been done differently? and what should we expect from customer service? 

For starters, even if it is a last resort, you could check to see if there is a different way to contact customer service. They could have a different phone number for you to try calling or maybe you could contact them by email. You might be able to get better help if they prioritize emails over calls, but keep in mind that they could be understaffed so it could take a while for you to get help no matter which way you contact them. In the event that you wait forever and finally get ahold of someone, and they tell you that they work in a different department and will transfer you, that might be a good moment to end the call. 

Another thing that could have been done differently is that maybe you could call customer service a different day. Having a busy day is not an uncommon thing, and I imagine it would be no different for social media companies. They are probably some of the companies that have it the worst.  

But what should we expect from customer service? I think that there are at least two things we should be able to expect.  

The first being a positive attitude, and that goes for both sides. When you call, the last thing you want is somebody that is going to give you a tough time, and the employee would not want that either, they are just trying to do their job. So as long as both sides treat each other with respect, whatever must be done can be done. 

The second thing being efficiency. I would hope that if I end up having to contact customer service, that they can help me out in a way that will not take too long. It would be unrealistic to expect them to solve my problem in the blink of an eye, but if everything goes smoothly it can feel like it did. Of course, this too does not apply only to the customer service worker. The caller also needs to cooperate with the worker to get things done. 

It may not be the best experience in the world, but by the end of a customer service experience Both sides should feel like they accomplished something.