Customer Service Is Not A Necessity

an ad for a car dealership on the radio proudly proclaims, "customer service is our priority and not a necessity!".

i wrote this off the first 65,000,000 times i heard it, mainly due to the strong accent of the speaker- clearly he is from another country and was either mis-translating an idiom from his native country, or didn't grasp the subtelties of english. but then his daughter, a fluent english speaker of unaccented american english did a commercial for the dealership and happily rattled off the same phrase. not catchy, not compelling. not even so nice... i imagine they are trying to stress that they have customer service because it is a priority for them, and not just because they have to. at least that's the only credible explanation i've been able to come up with.

so, even though i am passionately uncompelled to ever go to that car dealership, i do think they inadvertently captured the spirit of customer service in many companies. it's just not a necessity.

i could rant and rave about having a 65 number selection menu that eats up my time (and sometimes my husband's cell phone minutes) and often doesn't offer the option i need. but i won't. i could whine about the automated voice on the other end of the line, that can "assist me with commonly asked questions", but never does. but i won't. i won't get started about the lengthy messages that give no information and end with a suggestion to visit their website for further reams of unhelpful information. but today i want to vent about foreign customer service reps.

first, a disclaimer. i have nothing against foreign people. i married one. i lived abroad and was one. i think accents are awesome and other cultures are cool (well, most of them, anyway). but if you don't understand american society, and learned our language from reading the cartons of chinese manufactured "american" toys, PLEASE do not take a job in customer service for american clientele.

when reading an obscenely long confirmation number to an asian (?) customer service rep, my friend had basically the following conversation:

friend: J
service rep: G?
f: no, J
sr: hay?
f: no, J- like jelly...
sr: ooooooooh- G?

friend: 2
sercive rep: the letter 2?

no, i didn't make that up.

someone else i know has the name roger, but he spells it R-O-D-G-E-R. the indian rep kept calling him rudd guh. no big deal, but he pronounced it for them like 80 times. c'mon- if you can't say the name, at least just say 'sir'. do something to cut your losses.

on a call-in radio show, the caller said that he repeatedly tried to decline a credit card offer from an overseas telemarketer. finally, when they wouldn't take no for an answer, he said, "okay, i will take your credit card. the only thing is, i will never pay for what i charge. i will never pay back any of the money i borrow. is that okay?" and the telemarketer, apparently being from a nation without credit cards, replied, "i am delighted to help you set up this account. please wait on the line while i get approval from my manager." politeness: 10. quick on the uptake: -2

being techologically illiterate, i am sympathetic to the idea of overseas tech support. maybe this is one of those jobs that americans can't do- like mowing theior own lawns. i even understand getting people with british or french accents to sell stuff to us. being married to a sexily accented brit myself, i see how americans will fall all over themselves to hear him speak. they also assume right away that he has like 6 PhDs from oxford. so that, i get. but this whole third world country customer non-service thing is wearing a litlle thin with me.

i know of a radio host who was so fed up with non-english understanding reps that he said he would buy a first class ticket, regardless of the price, on the first airline he called for reservations on that had a native english speaker answer the phone. i think he said it took him like 8 tries.

so, my question is, why are the companies we patronize just not that into us? are they trying to customer non-serve us into the arms of their competitors, or are they just that out of touch? do the CEOs ever actually call their own customer service lines, or do they do this on purpose so they can make a joke tape to play at company outings? do they record our calls so they can use them to train other reps on how to be polite to a fault, but completely non-responsive to their customers, or do we all just have the wrong phone numbers- the ones that go to customer servant pergatory- where those who have committed heinous customer service crimes are doomed to answer my calls about why my oven doesn't work unless i plug it in?

maybe i just need to call a different letter...