Covid is helping to cover up poor customer service
NOT wishing to make light of the pandemic besieging us it occurs to me there will be a lot of businesses struggling to find an alternative excuse for terrible customer service once we are back to normal.
My bank has an automatic telephone message that directs every caller to a website so complicated only a member of NASA could navigate around it.
It complements this with a ‘Live Chat’ option advising customers that it is currently unattended ‘due to Covid’.
No matter how you seek to obtain a modicum of customer service you get the underlying message they don’t really like you and will go to extraordinary lengths to palm you off any way they can.
When, after hanging on the phone for 40 minutes, I finally found a real person to speak to she was in the Philippines and clearly had a set-menu of Q & A’s after which she referred me back to the bank where I was again put on hold due to ‘Covid restrictions.’
My GP’s surgery, that has previously served me well now forces me, on every call, to listen to a monotonous recording informing me that if I (or anyone I live with) have a continuous cough, a temperature, fever or loss of smell or taste I should not attend the surgery.
After telling many of their staff have been diverted to ‘Covid duties’ it asks me to be ‘patient’ as I may have a longer wait than usual.
I could help them out right away by suggesting they offer an option on the phone system for patients who have already heard the same message several times to skip it. How about, “Unless you (or anyone you live with) have been living in a cave for the past year press five and skip the monotonous message.”
In other organisations ‘Covid’ is their ‘get out of jail’ card for abysmal customer service.
If your TV box doesn’t work or your new sofa fails to turn up it’s… ‘Covid’.
When I met my window cleaner in town and asked where he had been for the past 8 weeks he said, “Working from home.” How does that work?
Along with an armada of honest hard-working people helping us get through this unrelenting pandemic there are too many companies hiding their poor customer service behind the ‘ Covid’ excuse.
Their time will soon be up. What will they tell us then?