As a customer, one of the most difficult thing that I had faced is to get to a person (any person) in the company. Whether I am a buyer, seller, shareholder or employee – the telephone and communication line should be kept free instead of keep on ringing and ringing, nobody picks up. Once I even tried to see how long before I get an answer. I gave up after an hour of listening to the ringtone of “Death”.
The other type of ringing is when it is automated and leads to nowhere at all. You can pick all the departments you like but still, no one bothers to pick up the phone numbers as advertised. Then why bother to go “1 for admin, 2 for HR, 3 for projects etc.” at all. What does that going to achieve?
I recommend that the business owners or directors were to call their company’s general lines and see how long they get to hang on the phone, day after day. If it’s just for one day, then I might understand that there could’ve been a departmental meeting of some kind that requires almost everyone. Funnily this is not the problem of small companies but rather large organisations with multiple offices around the world.
I would have gotten into the business, run a customer satisfaction index, and find out – how many businesses would have run off to the competitors because of the irritable consequence deriving from lack of response. My recommendation is that you should try calling “123” and see how fast you get a response from that company because I would have graded them 95% from the time, they pick up your call and tried to assist you over the line in whatever given circumstances. They are also well-trained to handle difficult customers as well.
Don’t underestimate the power of a good line of communication.
Comments