A Good Man is Hard to Find :: AT&T, BOA and Why It's So Hard to Find Good Support

First, a Happy Story

I had a good experience with customer service at AT&T recently.I had traveled to Canada and paid $50 up front for a 50MB data package that was explained on the phone as a one-time purchase, but had been billed a recurring monthly fee for a service I wasn't using. I didn't it notice for eight months (auto-debit, doh). The rep was helpful and even able to credit me during the call. The good experience shocked me a bit, and shocked some of my friends who heard the news.

Now Back to Your Regular Programming

At the same time, I was having a nightmare of an experience at Bank of America. When I made a transfer from my LLC to my personal account, I clicked a box that said, in essence, "both these accounts are mine." Boom - my account was suspended and I had no way to make business transfers or payments. After hours on the phone and hours in a local branch, BOA finally figured out and told me that because one account was a corporate account and one was a personal account, I had "committed fraud" by saying both these accounts are mine, that this had tripped Patriot Act regulations, and my account would be reviewed by an internal group over the next week. They offered no apology, no number to call, and no recourse if the account stayed suspended. Nightmare.

Why A Good Man (or Woman) is Hard to Find

In the end, my happy AT&T experience boiled down to finally finding one smart, dedicated person who seemed interested in my problem and devoted to fixing it. He referred to the billing issue as "our screw up" and I got the feeling he was really on my side and working for me. At Bank of America, I found literally no one willing to help, only people that cited "rules" and "regulations."

It got me thinking a bit about why it's so hard to find that person that really seems to care, so I started a little market research, surveying a few hundred front-line sales, support and service folks in big banks, phone companies, cable companies, etc. What I found was a bit shocking, but confirmed what I've always suspected.

They Don't Have Time to Help

In a lot of situations, the sales, support and service folks really wanted to help, but didn't feel the company gave them enough time. If they were meeting customers live in a store, they often felt their manager was hovering over them, and pushing them on to the next customer in line.

 

They're Not Always Paid to Help

In a lot of situations, the folks on the front lines admitted that their entire compensation pushed them away from spending time with a customer to solve their problem. Either their compensation was weighed heavily to commissions, or they had a certain metrics - like six calls per hour - that they absolutely had to hit and interfered with helping the customer.

They're Often Not Allowed to Help

Finally, there were a lot of times that the front-line folks admitted that there was a straightforward fix that would make a customer happy, but company policy prohibited the fix. Sometimes this meant not accepting a return a few days over the limit, other times it meant enforcing a long user agreement the customer obviously hadn't had time to read.

All in all, I walked away with a little more sympathy for the front-line sales and support folks. In more cases than not, these were folks that wanted to help that just felt their hands were tied.

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Bottom line :: There are broad forces in play that prevent a service or support person from helping, no matter, no matter how interested and well-intentioned they are.

Comments

[Alicia D]

Why that is so true! I worked on a sales line one summer and it seemed like I was the only one in the whole department who was ever nice to anyone who needed help. The companies definitely do make it hard to take extra time to help people, even when the mistake is obviously on their end. Luckily for me, I was a temp, so I took all the time I felt the customer needed.
Hopefully BOA and those other companies will realize they could probably have much higher customer satisfaction by practicing a little empathy instead of trying to save pennies by shortening call length.

[Kenneth Napier]

well can't say I haven't had a similiar situation happen to me with verzion wireless, good thing is at least they admitted there mistake and I admire the research you perform on the market and where it has gone.

[Kristee Worstell]

I have these same kinds of problems with Verizon and other utility companies. It often seems to me that it is up to the customer to fix the bugs with the company. Even when you are at a loss due to this regulation or that and it isn't good business practice and you point it out, they don't even offer to give you a free offer like they did back in the 90s!

[Christina]

Amazing findings! It has never once crossed my mind that many times employees want to help but simply cannot. I remember one time when I had to call my bank to get my credit card replaced because my number had been stolen. It took so long to finally get someone to send me a new card! They made me talk to numerous people, before returning me to the first person I spoke to! I've always felt like these people had no hearts, like they were meant to make life harder for the average customer. Now I know to give these people a break and to be nicer even though I may not always get my way with them.

[Runaway-run]

I never would have that of it this way before reading this article. I used to work in a grocery store, and we were told to always help a customer, even if we were on our own time and not company time (ie, going on break or after clocking out for the day). I personally did not like that policy, but it was beneficial for the customers! I will definitely have to keep this in mind if I have issues with any companies in the future.

[Bridgett]

If companies offered more incentives to employees for pursuing good customer service, there would be more people willing to provide support that would, in turn, make the company more appealing in itself.

[Liz]

I work as an AT&T front line representative for three years and no matter what the issue was I made sure I exhausted all options. My customers appreciated that and that gave me more clients. I had a few customers that really just wanted to take out there problems on someone. But after a year of yells, screams, items thrown at me and a few smiles I learned don’t take it to heart.

[Jeremy S.]

I like this article. As someone who has worked in a bog box retail store, (Radio Shack) Customer service is something that I have heard many complaint's about. The fact is that The Company Can Not Always Help You! I'm sorry if this sounds wrong, or you believe that someone should always be there to take you by the hand and say, "its alright, we can fix this up for you..." The matter of fact is, most problems are caused by Human Error (stupidity?) and not by the products or services themselves. If you can't handle figuring something out, and working it by yourself, don't assume that the company who built, sold, or serviced it is going to show you how to.

[Jacob C.]

It is so hard to find good help because most customer support agents just don't care. They are tired of there job and only stay for the dollar.

[Star Nyte]

Unfortunately, this is a very bad trend in business, One begs the question? , Why is there a Customer Service Department again? America would have a great deal more, customer loyalty and happy can't wait to do business with you from overseas as well, if that one , tiny in appearance, really large, monster was addressed. More than anything a great deal of stress, tension and anxiety would be erased if, Customer Service, was a reality and not a fantasy.

[Irene Victoria]

There are two competing forces. 1. a few companies dominate the market and do not have to care what consumers think. 2. Sites such as yelp.com make it easier for prospective customers to know what they are getting into with a given company.

[Marc]

This is so true! I always think of this. When you go to customer support for most companies, you can tell how frustrating it must be for them. Many of them DO want to help, however due to the circumstances especially policies they can't.

Many times they just don't know, you'll be amazed how common it is to find someone who just absolutely doesn't know their own company policy. One time i had to read the fine print out loud to a guy and finally he gave up, and called a superior for help.

[Holly]

I completely understand the reasons that you've outlined why they can't help - however, poor customer service simply INFURIATES me. So - I've always made it completely clear that I will either cease doing business with a company based on their customer service, or in some cases when I'm beginning a business relationship, I'll mention my loyalty to customer serviced based companies right up front. Hopefully a drop in sales, (if enough people did this of course) might turn around a policy or two.

[Chris Callaway]

I agree 100% that there are very few good customer service departments and or representatives. It's all about getting the sale upfront. Once they have your money, unless you are a big customer they usually treat you like dirt.

I haven't even been lucky enough to find many representatives that want to help. Most are overworked and underpaid. They just want to get rid of you ASAP. If they were paid better and weren't overloaded maybe they would actually take some pride in doing a better job.

[Danielle August]

Unfortunately, that is true in many cases. Even companies that don't have policies preventing a CSR from helping a customer have other issues that can cause a lack of service. I worked in customer service and we were not prevented from helping out when we could, but the fact of the matter was the store was way too busy to take time and help a single person other than ringing them up. This could have been resolved if more staff were hired but it wasn't in the best interest of the company. A little ironic if you ask me.

[John]

This is entirely true, i've worked tech support before for a few different companies and with each company we had specific guidelines that we needed to follow, we were limited to how long we could have a customer on the line before we moved onto the next, and so forth. Very interesting read. Thank you.

[lacey]

It is probably true but so ridiculous that these big companies have such awful service, how do they get away with it? It's not like people are going to quit using say bank of america just because they have poor service no, it is because the company is so big it makes it easier to overlook that the customer service reps won't really give you the time of day let alone address a real concern with you over the phone. I will say, I have been pretty successful with their online chat. I have found it much easier to state my problem and get things quickly resolved than trying to explain things to someone who doesn't speak english. Really though, these companies should be rewarding employees who provide great customer service there is nothing like brand loyalty to boost business.

[Amanda Rae]

These are very interesting findings but I have to say that I am not surprised. Customer service just is not service to a customer but rather an inconvenience to these customer service representatives or rather, the managers of these places. There needs to be a stronger focus on actual service to customers!

[WB]

Better service from a company will guareentee that same company repeat business and positive word-of-mouth advertising. On the other hand, poor service means quite the opposite, and it baffles me why they don't see this.

[Felix]

Very good research, Antony! Serving an existing customer is a liability for any business, a non-revenue generating asset. Therefore, service providers are always walking that fine line between showing the signs of carrying and not giving a crap about us. Why? Because we let them!

[Jim]

I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel when dealing with service and support personnel. Several years ago I was a technical support representative at a computer manufacturer and was only allowed to spend ten minutes on the phone with each customer regardless of the nature of the problem. This was a major point of contention between support personnel and company executives who never worked the front line and most of them never dealt with customers. The management personnel had calculated the cost of one phone call and concluded that ten minutes was sufficient to handle all inquiries. This article was definitely informative. Thank you.

[JD]

I totally agree that it is hard to find really good customer service. I say that as someone who was a #1 customer rep for one of the companies you have pointed out. Why is it hard for people to be good reps?

It really comes from an inner place... where you dont get offended by people who are rude and swearing at you on the last call because their significant other spent $800 on lunches in a month. It comes from being able to disconnect one call from the next, when there are literately 2 seconds between them. It also comes from not doing it as a full time job. Can you imagine 8 hours a day of breaking bad news to people and getting horrible reactions? Maybe you dont call and do that - but many others do!

It is hard to be a human servicing employee... that is why rules and regulations and procedures define it. If you know what you are supposed to say, and you are an emotional person (most are!) then you are likely to say things the right way.

[Dennisy]

It would be interesting to see how these trends map to companies that "get" customer service: zappos.com, USAA (banking), LL Bean, and Nordstrom's - to name a few I'm familiar with.

Above average customer service appears to be a combination of operational and technological efficiency, culture, management focus and employee buy-in. The companies that do customer service well, treat it as their single competitive advantage, for which the ENTIRE organization is responsible.

Heard the zappos CEO was answering support calls during the busy holiday season - that's a good start!

btw- what's up with all the customer support "ninja's" these days - I appear to be getting all the yellow belts when I call for help.

dY

[Dennisy]

Interesting view by Woot! CEO on customer service in the NYT today - last paragraph in the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/01woot.html?ref=technology