How much of our lives do we spend on hold? We have the world of information at our fingertips if we want the news, weather, traffic reports, to buy something, pay for a purchase, or see how our friends and family are wasting their time on social media. There is a commercial for e-bay that says it all. You see women watch other women walk by in a dress, then shoes, and then a purse, and the watchers go right to their phones and order the items on line. The new iPhoneX doesn’t even make us push a button, or use our fingerprint to open the new phone. It will recognize our face, and only, our face. You can’t ask for much better customer service then that. I don’t know what happens if you’re laughing or crying.
You my end up crying if go to a website for that instant information, and it doesn’t work. Then the worst fate of all awaits you. You have to call them. I recently went to rent a car on the AAA website. After several tries, it wouldn’t take my membership number. So I had to make the toughest decision of my day. I guess I have to call. Maybe someone stole my membership number, and has rented cars around the world. After going through the maddening selection process of press one for this, press two for that, I finally get someone on the phone. I explain the problem. He says the IT guys are working on it. The modern equivalent of “the checks in the mail.” So after a half hour that I will never get back, I finally get the car rented. They then send me a survey asking how my experience was when I called. Even though I know it won’t make any difference, I send it back with my complaints. I told them next time I’ll go to AARP to rent a car. I said I’m sure their website is working. Who wants to hear old people complain?
It’s not just renting cars and buying stuff. My wife recently retired as a Registered Nurse. She wanted to alert the state licensing agency that she wanted to go on inactive service. Of course, she goes to the website. After repeated tries, she couldn’t change her status to “inactive”. She then makes the mistake of calling. After being put on hold for over twenty minutes, a woman answered. My wife tried to explain what happened, and the woman said, “I never heard of a such a thing”, and put my wife back on hold. About seven minutes later, a recording came on saying due to call volumn, please call back later. The recording said, “Good bye”, and hung up. Never to be deterred, my wife tried again. She waited another 25 minutes, as the recording kept repeating, “Your call is important to us”, and “Our website can be helpful.” Finally, again, the recording said, due to call volumn, please call back. It said “Good bye”, and hung up again. My wife has now retreated to communicating as we did before the Internet, and before the telephone. She’s writing a letter.
Perhaps the most frieghtning example of customer service in the digital age is the Equifax breach. This is one of the big three credit agencies that have the mother load of all our personal information. Name, address, Social Secuity numbers, credit history, drivers license numbers. They got hacked, and they waited weeks to tell the 143 million people effected. Now it’s hurry up and go to our website, that’s just been hacked, and sign up to freeze your credit report so someone doesn’t steal your identity and start opening up lines of credit, and buying cars and houses in your name. When I first went to the website to sign up on line, I got “Loading”, which it never did. I tried again the next day, and got on right away. I froze my wife’s and my credit reports. You can unfreeze it when you want to buy something on credit, unless somebody hacks the system again.
But don’t lose faith. We recently called a landscaper to put some new plants and bushes around the house. We had used him before, and we were impressed. I called late in the day, and left a message. It’s a small business, and there is no one sitting in the office taking calls. But he called back the next morning, and asked if he could come over in about an hour and a half. I said great. He even called back, and said he would be a few minutes late. He wasn’t. We told him what we wanted, and asked his advice. He said he would have an estimate by the next day, which was Friday, or by Monday, at the latest. About an hour later, I hear a man’s voice at the front door. He drove back with a written estimate. No hold, no loading, no letter. Now that’s customer service.
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