We all know truly excellent customer
service has gone the way of the dodo bird. It’s hard to find good help. Hell,
it’s hard to find help, period. Finding someone knowledgeable, presentable,
professional-- and who possesses adequate communication skills and is eager
to help you is next to impossible. Post COVID, many retail and service
outlets that used to be open until 9 PM are now only open until 6 or 7 PM. Too
bad if you work long hours or have to fight heavy traffic. And yet, more and
more allegedly service-oriented businesses are in your face about demanding
tips for their employees, and increasingly large ones at that.
PROCEED
WITH CAUTION: I’M ABOUT TO GO ON A RANT.
My personal pet peeve, however, is
phone related. I am sick of calling an establishment and getting a recorded
message stating something like: “We are experiencing an unusually high volume
of calls at this time and cannot answer your call at the moment. Expected
waiting time to reach an operator is 187 minutes. We appreciate your patience.
Your call is remarkably important to us, so we ask that you please hold or call
back later. Thank you. Goodbye. Click.”
That’s complete B.S.!
And I know this because I have called the same number three times a
day—every day—since September 17th, 2022. The business cannot
possibly have experienced “higher than normal traffic volume” for 965
consecutive days. The traffic volume is, by definition, the normal traffic
volume. They just don’t want to tell me that, preferring to cover their behind
and lie to me instead.
I would prefer the truth. Tell it to me straight. I would
rather the business had a recorded message stating: “We can’t answer your call
right now, because we only have one operator on duty, and she is 19-years-old
and usually on the phone with her boyfriend. We don’t want to pay for another.
Also, we are still using an analog answering machine we bought at Sears for
fifty bucks in 1986. Deal with it! Click.”
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