The Toyota approach is an old hat for quality in industry type productions. Include quality in the process, it’s cheaper and better. The same should be true for information age services. The only way to find out as a customer is being happy on a regular basis and have problems sorted out quickly when they occur.
When some parts within companies begin to think about how to make their life easier and that of the customer more difficult, this usually has to do with service quality. And it has to do with an attitude which often can be simplified by “squeeze customers if the individual sums are low, the numbers high, if the number of predicted complaints is not likely to seriously damaging the brand, if the short term profit is higher than the forecasted service and reputation costs “.
That happens if the customer satisfaction is not really at the core of the company’s mission. The company is disconnected and the departments begin to see the whole thing as an operation. Doing a little less here, more marketing there, oh and some cost cutting. Of course things shouldn’t get out of control. To prevent that let’s make customer surveys and escalation strategies.
Why this, why now? Skype took away my few puchased SMS credits because of inactivity. Before that they sent me a couple of emails warning me of the fact. What should I have done? Spamming my friends with SMS?
It wasn’t so much the money I lost ( a couple of Euros), it was the attitude and the reason given in FAQs. Because of “accounting reasons” etc. That is lame. And the following question is why in the first place? Does Skype make more money because of that? I doubt it. People who rarely use them won’t come back once their credit has been removed. I certainly won’t buy anymore credits if Skype doesn’t change or gives me my money back.
And then after I wrote a service complaint, I got another few emails. This time they said: complaint received. Sorry, too many requests, come back to you later. Are you satisfied with the serice so far? Please give us a feedback and answer a couple questions. The questionnaire was far too verbose, went over several pages and towards the end repeatedly asked generic questions like would you use skype again, do you like us or have you been satisfied with the person in charge? I couldn’t even skip those silly questions. Is there a better way of refuelling the fire of anger?
1moment.org is the new address to [take 1 moment] 