Tring tring. Tring tring. Tring tring tring tring tring tring – multiply into 10 minutes. Then – “Customer service, may I help u?”
“Yes I would like to register a complaint, you see I paid my bill and …”
“It’s about your bill?”
“ Yes, well, actually about not paying…”
“ Okay, transferring, please hold…”
“ But listen…”
Tring tring tring tring tring tring – multiply into 15 minutes. Then- BEEEEEEEEEP.
Nothing is more annoying than people who put you on hold and never come back.
Actually there is something more annoying. It’s people who put you on hold and come back after 15 minutes, certifying you as a loser who has nothing else to do with his time and then putting you on hold again after politely telling you to please hold.
Having great faith in toll-free numbers and 24 hr customer service phone lines, I have always attempted to get as much done on the phone as possible. No point traveling from point A to point B in congested traffic to do something that can be done by merely lifting the phone off the hook.
But the more often you do this the more you realize that ‘customer service’ is not really happy to hear from you.
When a “ How may I help you?” comes on the line, sounding more like “ Just you dare…”, I see pictures in my head.
Visions of ‘badly trained, but ‘has a good voice’ men and women, sipping away at coffee in little white plastic cups, float before my eyes.
Like in a dream, I see these people reaching for their phones in extreme slow motion. Then after a single sentence reply, putting it on hold. Reaching for their purses, (in the case of women) they extract a lipstick and gently apply over their lips. Peek into the compact mirror and not being satisfied with the result, call another colleague to inspect it. This naturally leads to a discussion of the latest, long-lasting lipsticks available.
The men probably put you on hold and stretch, then look across to see how the women are doing with the lipsticks, go out for a smoke break and a quick chat on the mobile phone about tonight’s plans.
I am still on hold and the little red light flashing on their phone extensions is telling my customer service agents that this pest is refusing to go away.
Now, I am struggling with the decision of ringing off and calling back, when everybody has nothing else to do or staying on the line and having a whole customer service department laughing at this pathetic dweeb who insists on holding, wasting her time listening to FM music in a language she doesn’t understand!
This may just be my imagination going wild and in all probability, these men and women put me on hold and get to seriously tackling my problem. But why does it take ever so long to come back, just to say, call such and such department for further assistance.
Sometimes in the case of banks, the whole rigmarole takes 20 minutes, and then you are simply told the problem will be taken care of in 10 minutes. One hour later there is still no action and you get back on the phone for another 20 minute bout. Explaining the whole problem again, receiving a different solution this time and it still won’t work.
What is most surprising is that although these service centers are put up with the sole purpose of providing better customer service, they do just the opposite in fact.
Are they understaffed or are they just simply indifferent? And if the workload is so huge, then it shows that the system works so why not just employ more people?
From making one phone call to making five – that is what it takes to get one little knot unraveled.
While my faith in the 24 hr customer service phone line is slowly dwindling away, it continues to be the preferred solution to going physically to a service center.
After all, who wants to put a face to a bad experience?
What do you think?