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It’s October and summer vacation is a thing of the past already, until next year of course. One of the things I am left with after summer vacation is usually “the customer service experience”. According to a report by US News and World Report, the average American business loses 82% of its customers because of matters pertaining to customer service. The same report revealed that the Harvard Business Review found out that if a business can avoid losing 5% of its customers, the bottom line profit can increase by 25-95%. I believe that it is a piece of the puzzle that many companies need to invest more in and obviously those that are in a customer service position need training in.
This past summer I had some really good experiences but some really bad ones as well. I will start with one of the good one. An early morning flight on Iberia Airlines from Barcelona to Santiago de Compostela via Madrid. Unless you are the fortunate few who wake up happy, nobody really likes waking up early. The majority of us have had bad experiences on flights and to my surprise upon boarding the flight from Barcelona to Madrid, I was greeted by a very cheerful flight attendant with a bright “good morning” and welcome on board. It pretty much set my mood for the whole day and needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.
Then come the bad experiences. In Santiago de Compostela I had rented a car through Avis. Upon returning the vehicle at the airport, I noticed that the customer service representative starts looking under the car when doing the inspection to ensure that the car was in the same condition as when I rented the car. She calls me over and tells me that there is a scratch in the front and that I am going to have to pay for it. I go to the front and do not notice any scratch until she says, no no…under the front bumper. I had never encountered a situation like this, especially since I did not know that now you were responsible for something technically “underneath” the vehicle. On top of the fact that I did not cause that scratch on the car. Pretty much she did not want to hear about it and told me I had to pay for it. I asked for the manager, to which she responded…”he’s on vacation today”. Great! I take down all the information to call the next day to speak to the manager. Needless to say…I called during 3 days with 3 telephone numbers that I found and no one answered the phone. On the third day I decide to call the general customer service line and to my surprise they close at 3:00PM. I called at 3:30PM. With my blood already boiling, I decided to write an email to customer service explaining everything that happened. I was going to Cadiz for 4 days for the last leg of my vacation and figured when I got back, I would have an answer. I was wrong. No answer from Avis customer service. This is when I decided I would forward the same email every day until I received an answer. For 15 days I forwarded the same email without a response. I finally found an email for Avis in the United States to see if they could help me. The positive note is that they responded within 24 hours. The negative note is that since this was an issue with Avis in Spain, they could not help me. It took over 1 month for Avis in Spain to get back to me, thankfully with a positive response saying that they would credit the amount they charged for the damages as they sided with me saying it was not my fault and not my responsibility. Needless to say, I was happy with the answer but not with the time it took to get a response.
To end my summer odyssey, upon return from Cadiz at the end of August, the suitcases took forever to come out on the belt. No customer service representatives around I decided to go to the lost & found desk to see if they could give me information on when the bags would come out. To my surprise, their response was “It’s August, what do you expect”. Almost an hour and a half later, I had my suitcases but my vacation had ended on a sour note. Hopefully next summer thing will have improved.
Federico Arch
Emagister Team
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Related courses:
Customer Management Certificate Programs
Handling Customers Professionally
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Not surprised about your bad experience. Could it be a difference in mentality?
In America the customer service has such a high level anywhere you go. There is less job security and a waiter can get fired on the spot for having treated a customer bad and not only that, his salary can change 200% depending on his behaviour.
There is basically a higher incentive to treat the customer well.
In Spain this mentality is hard to find. Last week I went to a supermarket to buy food and I had to ask 3 people to tell me the price of the turkey. Nobody wanted to help me. “You have to ask someone else” Later I went to buy a pair of pants and the girl working was on the phone talking to her sister and refused to let me pay. And last but not least, during my last hospital visit the woman in the reception was talking on the phone about last weekends barbeque and couldn’t attend me until she finished. Rude is the only way I can describe it.
It is definitely something that is lacking here in Spain. As you mentioned…in the USA customer service is usually the #1 priority for any company. I just had another bad experience with an online shopping company here. The day before I was supposed to recieve my package I get an email saying that unfortunately there are delays and I wont have my package until the first week of November. I have been trying to get clarifcation for the last week….and they do not answer emails and it is practically impossible to talk to anyone on the phone….forget the part that it was really difficult to find a telephone number to call. Needless to say I will not buy from this website ever again. Looking through different blogs…I noticed that many people have had the same problem with this website.
unfortunately those who know what being a customer service representative is are a thing of the past. i work as an interpreter over the phone and customer service in the united states government offices?? uffff don’t get me starred on that one……
Saidy,
If you think that is bad….dont get me started on the “funcionarios” here in Spain!! 😉
I do consider all the concepts you’ve introduced on your post. They’re really convincing and can definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are very brief for novices. Could you please extend them a little from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.