Customer service is one of my preferred financial instruments. I firmly believe you can see an economy turning sour by looking at customer service. When you start seeing a recurrent pattern of horrible or non-existent customer service, it is a sign of an economy and even a nation in decline.
In the United States, it has gotten particularly bad. From The Hill - “‘National Customer Rage Survey’ points to troubling trend among US consumers”:
The results of a small nationwide survey suggest that consumers are becoming increasingly infuriated by the perceived level of assistance from customer service departments, and some of us aren’t above seeking “revenge.”
The 2022 edition of the National Customer Rage Survey, conducted by Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, shows evidence that more Americans are not only having problems with various products and services, but also that our “rage” toward the companies providing these goods or services is growing.
We’re also becoming more belligerent with customer service reps, and about 1 in 10 of us are interested in seeking “revenge” in the form of badgering, belittling, or threatening an employee, according to some of the responses to the survey.
“I don’t want to sound too ‘Pollyanna,’ but it’s kind of horrifying,” Scott M. Broetzmann, the President and CEO of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, told Nexstar of the report’s recent findings.
Of the 1,000 respondents polled, 74% claimed to have had an issue with a product or service in 2022, up from 66% in 2020 (during the last edition of the survey). Of those, 63% said they felt some sort of “customer rage” during attempts to resolve the issue — which is the same “rage” percentage observed in the 2020 edition, albeit one that now represents a larger number of infuriated consumers.
We’re also yelling at and/or raising our voices during 43% of our interactions with customer service, the survey suggests.
When the Chinavirus lockdowns started, I began to notice more people in service industries and customer service positions adopting an “every man for himself” attitude. Many stopped going out of their way to help people, or even doing their jobs at all. They were either genuinely concerned about getting sick, or they saw an opportunity to slack off and blame it on COVID. Some even stopped showing up for work altogether, figuring that it was easier to stay at home and collect unemployment than go to work at a job they actually hated.
More people have been picking up on this, and they’re not happy about it. What really pisses them off, myself included, is the apathy displayed. It’s bad enough when a company delivers a subpar product or service, but when it is followed by customer service that doesn’t give a damn, that’s something that would enrage anyone.
Yes, I realize there is such a thing as a bad customer, and I am all for firing bad customers. But I am also all for businesses operating with some kind of spirit of excellence. You don’t have to be the biggest or even the best at what you do. If your customers see that you’re giving it everything you’ve got, and continuously working to get better, they will support and reward that.
But if you make your customers think that you don’t care, or that you’re going to just take their money and run, you will incur their wrath, and you may not have much of a business left before long.
Perhaps even more troubling, 17% of consumers surveyed admitted to behaving “uncivilly” toward a company — and not because of an issue with its products or services, but due to a perceived difference of values or beliefs, such as religion, politics, gender issues or vaccination and mask mandates.
Seventeen percent might even be a conservative estimate. As noted in the full “rage” report, many consumers can’t seem to agree on what counts as “uncivil” behavior. Half of the respondents felt that yelling, arguing, and “social media assassination” were uncivil ways to deal with consumer issues, but the other half thought those was totally fine, or appropriate depending on the specific scenario. And, a quarter of the people surveyed didn’t think that “threats, humiliation, foul language, and lying” were uncivil at all.
There appeared to be a rise in consumers lashing out in public, too, especially during the earlier stages of the pandemic — a troubling trend that Broetzmann worries may continue.
“What constitutes reasonable behavior in the public square is being redefined. And it’s kind of scary,” he said.
Part of the reason for some customer dissatisfaction, Broetzmann feels, is that companies are having to deal with complaints from an ever-growing population — and likely an ever-growing customer base — and they may not have the resources or money to provide the same level of customer service that Americans may have been used to in previous decades.
In 1976, for example, a government survey found that only 32% of consumers had issues with a purchase or service during the previous year. The U.S. population has since grown by over a hundred million people, and now we have more sophisticated (and somewhat more complicated) appliances, cars, computers and apps.
Companies attempt to deal with growing dissatisfaction in a number of ways, like outsourcing their customer service department, setting up overseas call centers, or even investing in robotic or automated systems. Larger businesses, Broetzmann said, will often utilize a few different methods, sometimes even segmenting the departments that handle certain calls or complaints. But this particular tactic, he said, could create even further dissatisfaction, especially if representatives ignore the complaint and “pass the buck” to other departments.
“What it’s creating is even more of a rift, is what the data would suggest, between companies and their customers,” Broetzmann said, likening the issue to a famous line from a 1967 Paul Newman flick.
“’What we have here is a failure to communicate,’” Broetzmann said, paraphrasing a quote from “Cool Hand Luke.” “And it’s started to get even more complicated than it had been.”
If you are a business owner, I challenge you to think back to times where you were really treated well by another business, and work with your team to adapt that experience to what you offer. It doesn’t have to be grand, sweeping changes. Rather, it could be you and your team going back to basics, and reminding each other of the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you would want to be treated.
In this era of collective loneliness and atomized individualism, customers want to know someone appreciates how they feel and cares about them and their needs/wants, even if only on a professional level. And when you think about it, this has held true even before COVID. But it works, and it works just about every time it is tried.
Make your customers feel good about doing business with you, and give them what they want. What a concept.