Is customer service getting better, or is it just me?

With starting a business this past week I’ve been subject to more customer service representatives than I care to think about.  I’ve been calling, emailing, faxing, and stopping by so many places that I can’t even list them all.  And yet, I can only think of three people that I’ve come in contact with that haven’t given me absolutely outstanding customer service.  Two of them worked for the government, which explains that.  And the last one was a wireless sales person who I told right from the get go I wasn’t making any changes to my plan, so he wrote me off without a second thought. He could barely bring himself to give yes or no answers to my questions.

But other than that, every single person was friendly, knowledgeable, and responsive.  I had people calling or emailing me back just to tell me that they were working on my issue and wanted to let me know the status.  Without me even asking!!  I can tell you that has never happened before.

I’m guessing a few factors are coming into play here.

1.  Luck:  Either I’m having really great luck with customer service these last few days or I had really bad luck in the past.

2. Fear:  Watching a few rounds of layoff go through the staff might make people step up their game.

3. Survival of the fittest:  Companies tend to layoff new and under performing employees first.  So maybe by this point only the seasoned and knowledgeable people are left.

4. Boredom:  With business so slow the customer service reps actually have time to do their job properly.

So I’m curious,  have you been experiencing better service lately?

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I wrote that post last Friday and I believed it at the time.  But since then I’ve been subject to more bad customer service.  Sigh.  One of the issues I referenced above where the representative emailed me to let me know the status just completely melted down.  I was pretty bummed.  She made me wait four business days for inaccurate information.  Well, it wasn’t inaccurate but it was completely irrelevant.  It was the equivalent of me asking “Where is the closest gas station?”  and then waiting four days to hear “The sun rises in the East.”  While the statement is true and uses a directional word, it doesn’t really help me.

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