Whatever Happen To Customer Service?

Anyone who has read my social media account, although it mainly concentrates on travel and photography or literature, will know that I have an interest in Customer Service. In truth, it is not so much about customer service, and more about the lack of services, and the lack of personal interest. Companies who rest their entire help or information system on Artificial Intelligence, for example, and thereby frustrate and alienate their customer base are a prime example, but also in those areas where such interaction isn’t possible, but the service is failing anyway through a lack of interest and training.

I recently had cause to open a new bank account in the city where I have been living for the past three years. There are numerous institutions in the city, all apparently keen to take and guard your earnings with ordinary checking accounts, but also savings, credit and investment offered as sidelines. Some are considered open banks, some private. Clearly the private ones tend to be aimed at those who have slightly more income and wish a degree of privacy outside of the mainstream. For my needs a standard account is quite adequate, and so I went to three of the main banks to make my application. Now, when I first began living in this fine country, many decades ago, a potential customer went into the offices of their chosen bank, up, to a counter, filled in a form, showed their identification and waited while the details were recorded, an account opened. It was a simple and efficient system, with a person across the counter explaining the system and completing the necessary administrative work. All of my bank accounts have been opened in this way, although it is fair to say I haven’t opened a new account in many years, having been quite content with what I had. Many banks here, however, are specific to an area, a downside in effect. When my account is in one city, and I wish to pay money into that account in a bank of the same name but in another city, it does not work. I cannot pay money into my account in Hamburg, for example, if I am in Berlin.

Today, when I wish to open a bank account and deposit my funds, I am offered an appointment to meet a specialist banker. In my case, in all three banks I approached, this appointment would have been two or three weeks later. Customer service has been pared down in numbers as much as in services, with fewer front-line agents available to handle the work. They are also required to handle other areas in their daily working lives, and customer service, in this instance, is a very minor aspect. Handing out money to people who wish to withdraw from their accounts is not a part of their working lives either, for that there are machines in the front lobby. Some of the banks I considered in my short search for a new financial home also do not accept loose change any more, except at an exorbitant fee, a major downside for any small business with cash-paying customers.

This lack of customer service goes further than just an attempt to open a bank account, despite the fact that banks survive on the finances provided by their paying customers. We have probably all seen, if only from a distance – because we have taste and wish to eat healthily – those serve yourself screens in fast food establishments. There are no friendly workers waiting to greet you and take your order any more, you have to do it yourself, and without a small or small talk. The fast food company saves money through this action, not having to pay anyone who knows the menu and can make suggestions, but without feeling the need to pass those savings on to the customer. This week I used such a machine in a non-fast food bar, with two workers watching me struggle to find my way through and admittedly simple menu. My struggle resulted in me having to wander back and forth between these workers and the machine, asking where to find the button for coffee, and then which drinks were really available when told there is no coffee, from the workers, and only one plastic-cup refillable drink from the machine. Across the mall from there was a bakery with a similar screen to take orders, so that anyone wishing to have a morning coffee with a cheese and egg roll must suffer the bane of technology instead of a friendly chat and a smile. None of these screens, in the bakery, the vegan restaurant, the various fast food establishments, are at a height where someone in a wheelchair can use them.

The most frustrating of all, as we all undoubtedly know, is the lack of customer service on the telephone. Click on this number for this service, or speak your account number into the machine, and hope it can be interpreted. Click on the next number and then listen to an automated voice telling you to go to their web site, or join a queue for the next real worker. Is there someone on the other end of the telephone line, if you ever manage to break through? Will the frustration ever end?

Sitting at a table in a market square, taking a break from capturing unsuspecting people with my camera, I decided to order a coffee and relax in the sun. This was the height of tourist season last year, and the city is not a minor one. There were no menus on the table, but I only wished to drink a coffee, so I hailed a passing waiter. It turned out, however, that this was not a passing waiter, but someone who only brought orders out the tables, and cleared up after the customer had left. They were not empowered to take orders for a simple cup of coffee. No one was empowered to take orders for a simple cup of coffee. Instead there was a QR Code affixed to the surface of the table which I was expected to scan, to activate an online menu on my smart device, to place an order online at the coffee shop I was physically at, to get a simple cup of coffee.

For many a person whose job is to serve others, whether it be in a restaurant, at a bank, or in any other form of sales-related service, is considered to be at a menial level of employment. A lower level of education, lesser and fewer qualifications are required. They merely need to be able to talk to the customer, note their needs, and convey those requests to the person who creates, then bring the ordered wares out and serve them. They need to be the front line of the company offering a service, the first connection to that company, the conduit for desires and service. If there is no waiter in a restaurant, the system fails. If no one can open a bank account, the system fails. If we cannot order a simple cup of coffee and sit back to enjoy the summer weather, the system fails. This front line, under-educated, badly paid person is the image of the company they are working for, the person who sells it, the person who provides the services required. A touch screen cannot replace them, and nor can a QR Code taped to a table. If I have questions about my bank account, an online form is not going to help me through the complexities of my thoughts and needs.

Customer service is, for me, the last bastion of a company’s image and seriousness. I will not sit at a table in a restaurant where no one brings me a menu and makes suggestions for the meal of the day. I will not spend my time scanning QR Codes to hunt through an online menu for a simple cup of coffee. Nor will I tap on a screen for my egg and cheese roll. The chance to exchange a few words with the service personnel, to hear what they have to offer, to see them smile – hopefully real and in their eyes too – and to relax in a cozy, non-industrialised atmosphere is what experiencing customer service is all about. And some may well call be a Luddite – protecting my world against the encroaching machine – but I will fight on this hill. Not only fight on it, I will win this hill – for me, at least. A future of ordering all that I need and wish without seeing another human being, and being able to converse with them, is not on my bingo card, and never will be.