Good Customer Service vs Bad Customer Service
Ok - so some of you checking out the blog yesterday might have seen my huge rant about customer service - in particular, bad customer service. And more specifically, one of my special pet peeves, Customer Service Representatives Who Interrupt You. It was only posted for a very brief time. I took it down after reading it because it was written in the heat of the moment, and came across as very holier-than-thou (because I was PISSED) and I didn't want to offend anyone out there in the customer service field who actually knows what their job is and are really good at what they do.
So I decided to take down the post, cool off, and try one last time today to contact customer service for the company with whom I was having the issue. And may I say: Wow. What a difference.
Let me first give you some background. I am trying to transfer money between two bank accounts at two different financial institutions. We'll call them Financial Institution "A" and Financial Institution "B". Financial Institution "A" provides a service, for free, that does electronic funds transfer to any bank account at any other financial institution. It seemed like the easiest way to go. I entered all the relevant information and then waited the requisite 5-8 business days for the service to be activated. On the 8th day, I checked the status, and found it was inactive. I called customer service, was transferred to a specialist, who proceeded to tell me that it would be active by the following Monday. It just hadn't been processed yet.
So Monday I checked the status again, and found it to be still inactive. So I called customer service again, was transferred to a different specialist, who proceeded to tell me the first specialist was wrong, and that the reason the service was inactive was because the service initiation transaction had been rejected by Financial Institution B, which meant that the information I had entered was incorrect. I had several issues with this response. First and foremost, the woman wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise to explain my problem. She believed she had figured out all on her own what my problem was. Whenever I tried to provide information she would cut me off or interrupt me. Second, she was dead wrong. The information I had entered was all correct. I knew this to be fact. Third, she proceeded to take an attitude with me despite my attempts to remain calm and unoffended and to give her the benefit of the doubt (maybe she was having a bad day?) and fourth, she was completely unhelpful and offered up absolutely no solutions to my problem. By the end of the call she was downright rude, and I had had enough. That's when I vented by writing my blog entry which I subsequently tore down :-)
So today I called back again. 3rd time is the charm, right? I got a different customer service rep, who transferred me to yet another specialist. I braced myself for the worst. What I got instead was a polished, professional, courteous representative who listened to my problem, asked me relevant questions, looked up my case history and summarized my issue back to me so I could be confident that he understood, provided me with a status update on their investigation of my issue, offered me a temporary solution without my having to ask ("how about I overnight a check to you for your money, at no charge, while we sort out this transfer issue?") and then thanked me for my patience while they continued to investigate why the money transfer service wouldn't activate.
Now THAT's customer service.