Have you noticed that some of the least helpful people on the planet have jobs involving customer service?
Two weeks ago some relatives of ours were flying out of Tucson on one of the airlines that nickels and dimes you with add-on fees. The airline has what they call a “cashless cabin” and I wanted to get them a gift they could use on board. According to the airline’s website, it
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I called to ask if the airline sold gift vouchers or if it accepted MasterCard or Visa gift cards. No they didn’t sell vouchers but the gift card question stumped the agent on the phone so she put me on hold and came back about a minute later saying, no they did not accept gift cards.
I later ran into a banking friend and the subject came up. He told me what the airline representative told me couldn’t be true. With his assurance I bought one and gave it to our travelers. It worked.
Assuming the airline representative put me on hold to talk to someone else — perhaps even a supervisor — means two people assigned to customer service collaborated to come up with the wrong answer. In other words, they didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s no wonder airlines get such a bad rap if that’s all the better they train their people.
Health insurance companies can probably trace a good amount of public’s outcry for health insurance reform to their own customer service. Another family member has had an ongoing issue with a son who has had three surgeries in his two-year life. At one point the health insurance company declined to pay for a procedure so the boy’s mother got on the phone to argue her case. In a call she said lasted more than 50 minutes, she got bumped up to a supervisor, who without explanation approved payment.
When the physician’s office received the money we wondered why there had been a question. The billing office said it happens regularly. Why? Is this a health insurance system we want to protect?
My last story about a customer service representative is one of my own. My fancy-schmancy four-year-old high-definition TV set developed its own version of a green screen last month. It turned out it was a defect that was involved in a class action lawsuit. The manufacturer agreed to extend warranties until June 30, 2009. But I was three weeks out of the warranty. How was I to know about it? I mailed in the warranty card. What do they do with those?
In this case, the manufacturer clearly didn’t want to fix the set — and, in fact, it no longer makes that type of TV. Instead, a customer service representative offered to sell me a new TV. I could pick from one of five different models, all priced at about one-third of retail prices — one was $200.
I guess the lesson is customer service works occasionally. But you have to be persistent. More to the point, am I eager to do business with any of these companies?
E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com.
Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.
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