Pick up the damn phone! No automated voice menus. No emails with “do not reply” in the name. No being on hold for an hour. Let me talk to a person - quickly. A person will understand what I’m trying to say way better than a machine. For some reason, we’ve come to believe that we can outsource all the work to robots - even empathy.
This rant, of course, is with respect to customer service these days. If I’m a customer with a problem, I want it sorted immediately - not in 5 to 10 working days.
We’ve all had experiences with poor customer service. Trinidad (regrettably) is notorious for this - particularly in its food service industry. I believe this might be due to a lack of structured empathy training.
Universities in general are similarly frustrating. They are inherently massive and made up of smaller specialised departments. This often leads to a bureaucratic nightmare of different departments signposting you to other departments. There’s also frequent need for approvals from people “above”. This can take a simple request upward of 3 weeks to be solved.
I often compare these examples to my time at Octopus Energy in Manchester. Octopus Energy are a green energy supplier and they are obsessed with customer service. As a growing young company - they should be. They haven’t yet established decades long trust from giants such as EDF or Scottish Power. Their approach to customer service was unique: Despite the technical nature of the industry, each service team (often 10 people or less), had the adequate training (in both empathy & energy) to solve a customer’s problems within that very team. If a customer called with a problem, they’d often sort the customer’s problem within that very phone call. No transferring to other departments. No long hold times.
The moral? Don’t outsource your customer service to computers. Your customers are your gold. So treat them like gold. They aren’t “problem ticket numbers.” They are people.
As Derek Sivers puts it: Hire the sweetest, most empathetic people, and make sure they have all the time and resources they need to make your customers very happy. If they get so busy that their interactions are getting succinct, it’s time to hire another. It’s worth it.
Treat your customers well and not only will they come back - they’ll tell their friends. Loud people are loud whether it’s complaining or praising.