Customer Service Is So....Old School

Every day I’m more and more convinced that Corporate America thinks it’s a great idea to put up walls between themselves and their customers. Internet commerce provides a great excuse to either outsource customer service, turn much of it over to some very advanced customer relationship software or pretty much drop it altogether.

Watching the onset of this – and the way it seems to be spreading like an epidemic among our largest corporations — the only conclusion I can reach is that many of these companies simply have no interest in talking to their customers.

Consider my recent experience with UPS, a company I interact with regularly in my business because every promotional product we sell needs to get shipped to somewhere.

Back in December I was charged for a shipment that wasn’t mine. A supplier mistakenly billed me for a something that went to another client. I attempted to address it on UPS’ Billing website, but was pressed for time and could not easily find where you had to go to dispute a charge. So I put it off and forgot about it amidst the hustle and bustle of the holidays…until yesterday.

My memory was jogged by a phone call from UPS — with a recorded voice on the other end — that droned on about how I better pay up or else. Fair enough. Back to the UPS Billing website I go…and I’m looking around and can’t seem to figure out the proper way to dispute a charge. You would think it would be simple, but it’s not.

So I have to call the main UPS number, 1-800-PICK UPS. Only problem is there’s no way to link from that number to any function related to billing. When I ask for ‘Rep’, the password UPS uses for requesting live help, I get a "fine we’ll connect you, but first tell us the purpose of this call…" and it gives you some options…none of which have anything to do with billing.

Now I have to find the….(drum roll please)…. Billing Center 800 number, which I finally locate after going back and listening to the original message with the drone voice. Finally about 20 minutes later, I get a live person who sounds anything but happy to talk to me…and she proceeds to grill me about the problem with all the patience of my teenage son when I’m 5 minutes late picking him up.

The matter ultimately got resolved, but the point remains that UPS does NOT want to talk to you. It’s like they’re telling their clients, "Use our service, send us your money and shut up."

And they’re not alone. Local banks are now advertising the fact that you can talk to a live person when you call them. Reason being that that largest banks are going the way of UPS. In fact many have made no bones about their intention to reduce their roster of tellers and push you to online banking.

All of this, in my opinion anyway, is a byproduct of our texting, smartphone-based society which, if it isn’t using those is becoming more and more reliant on the internet to make it through the day. Actual human to human interaction is now trending towards becoming a thing of the past.

To paraphrase a popular current ad campaign – that’s New School Customer Service, Baby!