We’ve all experienced really bad customer service at some point in our lives. Whether it was failure to resolve an issue to our satisfaction (“sorry, no refund!”), or interminable waiting on hold, or outsourced customer service that really has no meaningful connection to the brand we engaged with, there’s plenty of frustration.
However, we should consider, perhaps even admit, customer service, as an industry, has improved over the years due to technology, CRM systems, and, perhaps most importantly, social media.
The consequences of a poor customer service experience have moved away from the one-on-one private phone conversation to a spectator sport in which anyone can share a bad experience, leave a review, or throw shade on a company for not “handling” an issue well. The cost of a bad customer service experience, in real dollars, can spiral out of the reasonable-sphere very, very quickly. Companies get this, and they have done well in evolving and investing to address this new paradigm shift.