Some Blog Site

I had to call customer service last week (can’t cancel any services easily online, must give someone a chance to talk you out of it first) and thus spent some time on hold.

It was the standard stuff – a bit of music, then the music stops and gives you a rush of hope that you will be speaking to someone now, only to find out the music stopped so they could play you a recorded announcement, then the music resumes.

In this case, half the announcements were the line “Your call is important to us” and then something about the order in which they take the calls.

I got to wondering about the phrase “your call is important to us”. And I think that is the wrong priority for a company to have. I don’t want them to value my call, I’d rather have them value me. It’s like they’re causing trouble just so I have to call them, because my call is important to them.

I want a company that prioritizes my satisfaction as being important to them.

I want a company that prioritizes getting things right so that customers don’t have to call them.

I do not want a company that prioritizes my calling them as being important to them.

What I would rather hear is “we are sorry you had to call us”.

But the worst thing to hear is information about how I should be using their app or website instead of calling them. Dear companies, my calling you is the last resort. I have already tried your online services and they told me I can’t do whatever it is online and I must call. Or my thing is not an option. Or I got an error. All the people on the phone fall into either that category, or the category of not liking online things or computers in general and so they’d have to call you anyway to have you walk them through it. Don’t pretend that your call numbers will go down if you just tell people about your website – put that effort into making your online options better.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.