We are not owed good customer service. It is not an inalienable right. It is a creation of advertisers who want us to feel good and loved and respected. Here is the reality: there are stores which sell products. Most of them put the products on shelves where we can easily find them and then display the price at which they are willing to part ways with said product. If we think the price is fair, we will take it to a place in the store where there is a system for taking our money. After we have handed over the money, the product is ours, and we are free to leave. It is as simple as that. The store is not required to sell products that we need, to make sure they have in stock everything they sell, to have its representatives smile at us or even to have representatives at all. Their advertisers (whom the companies have hired because these special kind of people went to school for years, and were further trained, to learn the art of causing the public to believe things that are not true and to see things that are not there) have led us to believe that we are guests, royalty even. And, of course, that we are always right. (We rarely are.) Obviously the companies have calculated that it pays to convince us that we are owed good customer service even though they clearly risk upsetting us when they do not deliver it. After all, they have advertisers to smooth it all over.
Tomorrow's topic: PR people- why their appearance on a scene always signifies that whatever bad thing is supposed to have happen did indeed happen because if it didn't they wouldn't be there. Any old schlub could go in front of a camera and tell the truth.
I agree with you, but also think that if you then have a problem with the product, the only thing that makes good business sense is to provide enough customer service to keep me from never returning in the future.
ReplyDeleteI clicked on all your ads, btw. I like your blog.