Today’s Post is Sponsored by the phrase “Customer Service”
Can you say, “Customer Service”? I knew you could. NOT!!!
Right. Customer Service is a dying art. In the fairy tale past companies took care of their customers because they knew customers kept their businesses afloat. Now, customers are cattle to milked for money then sent to slaughterhouses to become steaks and hamburger when there’s no more milk to be squeezed out of them.
I had a whole editorial written this evening, but then I got home and read an email from a technical support person. Now this has a whole other tangent and life of its own. Fortunately, I do have a “bright side”. In the midst of the cattle drives, there are some companies (and they’re not JUST the small, independent, family companies) that still care about their customers. For the most part (and I’m sure there are exceptions) Starbucks is one of them.
Say what you will about “Corporate Coffee” and their product, they do care about their customers. Most of the shops do go out of their way to make sure the customer is taken care of. Their corporate customer care doesn’t treat questions or complaints like the person just got of the Short Bus. For all their hugeness, they still have a sense of customers being important.
I wish I could say the same about other companies. I really wish I could. But after this past week, I am now quite cynical — especially when it comes to computer program technical support. I used to think it stunk to be a woman dealing with an automotive mechanic — this is worse. This is on Cable TV Customer/Technical Support Scale of “Don’t Give A Crap”. And they shouldn’t be. No one should be, but computer programs? Seriously? At least Cable has the “excuse” of being almost the only game in town (or they used to be and haven’t adapted). There are 100+ choices in programs doing what this one does — they don’t have room to tick off their customers.
I’m talking about Internet Security Suite programs, and Zone Alarm specifically. For the last week — since Christmas when I got my new Toshiba laptop — I’ve been going back and forth with their Tech Support (which you can only contact by email if you have a product key, know the secret handshake, and hold your tongue just right). If you don’t have those things, you’re sent to the Black Hole that is the User Forums. Which are only slightly less useful than their tech support. Oh, and don’t bother with the live chat window that follows you through the site, that’s just for customer support, not technical support. Though I’m confused by the distinction.
Even if you manage to get to the email with all elements in place, you still get to wait 2-4 business days (excluding weekends and holidays) for a reply. Then you get a rote “fix” that tells you how to do a clean uninstall and reinstall the program (the standard fix). If that doesn’t work, they have you do it again, this time with clearing out your start menu and finding out what conflicts with it. If that doesn’t work, they send you the first fix again but with the bonus of saying it must be that your Windows isn’t fully updated.
Heaven forbid you should try to tell them that you keep your system up to date. I told them I updated my brand new system, and was told just because my computer is new doesn’t mean it’s up-to-date and to update my system. Hard to do WHEN THERE’S NOTHING TO UPDATE.
I’m not four years old. I speak and read English like the native I am — so SHOUTING at me isn’t going to make me either understand better or fix the problem. But heaven forbid that my problem be off their little script. It’s not the first time I’ve been to this particular rodeo.
Insulting my intelligence, though? That gets you not only snarked at in a return email, but gets blog posts about the experience and honkin’ big THUMBS DOWN in the recommendations. And pretty much the guarantee that some other company will be getting my business now and in the future.
This cow is through being milked.