It\u2019s October and summer vacation is a thing of the past already, until next year of course. \u00a0One of the things I am left with after summer vacation is usually \u201cthe customer service experience”.\u00a0 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%.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
This past summer I had some really good experiences but some really bad ones as well. \u00a0I will start with one of the good one.\u00a0 An early morning flight on Iberia Airlines from Barcelona to Santiago de Compostela via Madrid.\u00a0 Unless you are the fortunate few who wake up happy, nobody really likes waking up early.\u00a0 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 \u201cgood morning\u201d and welcome on board.\u00a0 It pretty much set my mood for the whole day and needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n
Then come the bad experiences.\u00a0 In Santiago de Compostela I had rented a car through Avis.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I go to the front and do not notice any scratch until she says, no no\u2026under the front bumper.\u00a0 I had never encountered a situation like this, especially since I did not know that now you were responsible for something technically \u201cunderneath\u201d the vehicle.\u00a0 On top of the fact that I did not cause that scratch on the car.\u00a0 Pretty much she did not want to hear about it and told me I had to pay for it.\u00a0 I asked for the manager, to which she responded\u2026\u201dhe\u2019s on vacation today\u201d.\u00a0 Great! I take down all the information to call the next day to speak to the manager.\u00a0 Needless to say\u2026I called during 3 days with 3 telephone numbers that I found and no one answered the phone.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 With my blood already boiling, I decided to write an email to customer service explaining everything that happened.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I was wrong. \u00a0No answer from Avis customer service.\u00a0 This is when I decided I would forward the same email every day until I received an answer.\u00a0 For 15 days I forwarded the same email without a response.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The negative note is that since this was an issue with Avis in Spain, they could not help me.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Needless to say, I was happy with the answer but not with the time it took to get a response.<\/p>\n
To end my summer odyssey, upon return from Cadiz at the end of August, the suitcases took forever to come out on the belt.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 To my surprise, their response was \u201cIt\u2019s August, what do you expect\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n
Federico Arch
\nEmagister Team<\/p>\n
___________________________________<\/p>\n
Related courses:<\/p>\n
Customer Management Certificate Programs
\nHandling Customers Professionally<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s October and summer vacation is a thing of the past already, until next year of course. \u00a0One of the things I am left with after summer vacation is usually \u201cthe customer service experience”.\u00a0 According to a report by US News and World Report, the average American business loses 82% of its customers because of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[2,90,91,92,93,94],"class_list":["post-3353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-english","tag-customer-service","tag-customer-service-courses","tag-customer-service-skills","tag-customer-service-tips","tag-customer-service-training"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n