There are some things which we know to have created for a specific use, but because they seem so innate to our purpose, we do not know their origins, for we have simply forgotten as to why we ever did it in the first place.
Early on, someone created ‘customer service’. And, surprise; they didn’t create it to help anyone other than themselves. Customer service was originally implemented as a sleight of hand, so proprietors and entrepreneurs could stave off their purchasing public while they continued production, designed new inventions, or, more likely, counted their money. And in the generations since the introduction of customer service, invented shortly I suppose right after the first customer showed up angry that the product he purchased didn’t work and shot the man who sold him the snake oil that did not get ‘rid of the demon syphilis’ as he’d been promised, well, the whole thing seems to have gone downhill. Someone call Ralph Nader: Customer service is broken.
I’ve recently purchased Apple’s most popular product, the iPhone, from their store just down the street from my apartment. Apple just released their new model, the 3GS, and I was in a position to be able to purchase the phone the day of its release. So, when the press release rolled out that on June 19, Apple would be releasing its new iPhone 3GS, I was online, reserving my phone, ready to go. As soon as I clicked ‘Reserve your phone now’, I realized that I would be out of town that weekend. Worried they’d give my shiny new iPhone (with a compass!) away, I called my local store.
“Yes, hello, I’ve just reserved the new iPhone to pick up at your store…”
“Congratulations, sir!”
“Yes, um, thanks, but I just realized, I’m going to be in Florida that weekend… how long do you hold reservations?”
“10 days from the date of availability, nothing to worry about.”
“Great, thank you.”
“Thank you.”
<click>
I literally hung up and thought to myself, “I love Apple, they have great customer service.” I’ve always felt that they had great customer service. When I bought my 24″ iMac a year earlier, they walked me through everything I’d need and sold me a great product. When I needed to move music from my PC to the iMac and then onto my new iPod Nano, they helped me. And when I had questions about the pros and cons of Logic Express versus Logic Pro, they were blunt. See the pattern?
I just spent a paragraph discussing customer service by defining it through illustrating its ironic, inherent lack of actual service. See, in all these situations, there was nothing wrong, nothing to be solved, no errors to report. I wasn’t getting customer service, I was being told by a company how to be a customer. They were coaching me into being their customer. How to buy our stuff and get the eff out so the next person can step in line.
Is that wrong? Well, like with most things on this blog, that all depends.
If, when I had returned from Florida the week after the 19th when my pretty new phone was put in a safe, away from the rabid customers that wrapped around the block like zombies, ready to hollow the brains out of anyone that stood in their way to get to my new iPhone; if, in other words, the store had done what the term “reserve” implies, then I wouldn’t be off on this particular tangent.
Because when I returned and called the store, I was informed that the iPhone 3GS had, indeed, sold out, and that my reservation was “only good for the 19th”. Besides being a blatant contradiction to what I had been previously told, insult to injury was provided in the company all but publicly boasting that their online reservation system had solved the wait-in-line issue Apple suffers every time it releases a new iPod product. And as for the customer service, well, having a twenty-something basically tell me, “too bad” was incredibly insulting and annoying. While not obligated to assist me in solving my problem of not having an iPhone, the attendant could have offered me other avenues of assistance. Instead, I was told that no one knew when the next shipment was coming in, and that if I wanted, I could renew my reservation online and check back later in the week. What made this individual think that I was in the mood to purchase anything from their company at that instant defies logic.
So naturally, I wrote a letter to Steve Jobs, because customer service had failed, and when customer service fails, we kid ourselves and go to the top. As if it has worked in the past, and precedent demands this sort of thing. We all know that customer service is just a wall of mediocre people separating us from their superiors. And if we think that at some point, things were better than they currently are? They weren’t. There’s been no devolution of customer service. Just because customer service jobs are being handed over to foreign phone banks doesn’t mean things have gotten worse, it just means that things were never very good in the first place.
My letter has not been answered. I imagine Mr. Jobs and his staff of thousands are inundated in similar complaints, but as a consumer, when I complain, I do not expect results. I am trained to let the water roll off my back, return to the store, and try again. Which is exactly what happened. 72 hours after my initial ordeal, I was in line at the same store, purchasing my new iPhone 3GS, with no discount, and not one mention of the failure in customer service Apple had me suffer just days earlier. I didn’t even ask for an apology. And then, I went home to my girlfriend, raving about Keith, the young kid who helped me out. But he didn’t really help me, did he? No. He sold me something, and it took a couple hundred words on paper to figure that out, like, just now. But, hey, the product is great. But somehow, that’s not the point.
If we, as consumers, had any collective intestinal fortitude, when wronged, we would march into their stores, announce our anger, then march right out and never go back. If we really wanted to fix the way we were treated, the way our money was treated, we’d be able to. But, unfortunately, we are a society in decline of standards in tolerance, and we allow things to happen because we empathize. We empathize with the minimum wage worker behind the counter. We see a future we pray to avoid in the lonely middle-management sycophant whose job is to iron the wrinkles of an ungrateful customer base. Worse, we even idolize the people at the top while simultaneously damning them under our breaths in line at the big box stores.
In other words, we let it happen. Because in the end, it’s more about the product, than it is about customer service. On both sides of the counter.
and you can do it all over again in 9 months when the “new” model rolls out.