Customer Service - Another Winner

I also hate that. I also hate it when they prefer to ask more questions than just actually solve the issue. So a ticket that could have been solved by them the first time around ends up being dragged out over days and days.

Rod,

The harder you make it for someone to contact support, the less people you will get contacting support. May have something to do with it. It probably gets rid of a few of the time wasters.

I didn't give the details as to why I thought the support from those companies was extraordinary. I do agree that many companies have been lowering the bar, particularly with regard to saving money on hiring by using long automated phone menus with recorded FAQs you have to choose from before getting to a human.

But in some ways, the bar has been wildly raised as a result of technologies and competition. You are younger than me, and maybe don't have my experience of watching the world go from 3-5 channels of mostly garbage entertainment, party lines, (cordless phones and cassette answering machines were revolutionary), towns where most stores, including gas stations closed at 6 or 7pm, etc, to todays instant, 24/7 gratification for just about any service imaginable. I know these aren't all customer service issues, but I would consider the lack of 24 hour convenience to be customer service related. The 7-11 store was life changing; you could buy beer and candy after 6 pm finally; the fact that the store was named after it's hours says a lot.

I stand by my judgement of exceptional service from Netflix and Hostgator; they have both gone above and beyond what was ever normal in any era including today.

Hostgator will spend 1/2 an hour or more at a time, sometimes multiple times per night, patiently teaching you how to do technical tasks. There have been months when my $7 account entitled me to several hours of support; to call it above and beyond is an understatement, and a big part of why so many Warriors are fans. Often the support is only indirectly related to their services, such as Wordpress training, Filezilla, etc.

When my router broke, I called Netflix to see if they could shut off and restart my service until I got a new one. They had no way to do that, so they simply comped me the month without a second thought, and with service still running when the new router was set up.

When I had a problem setting up my Roku box, Netflix walked me through it at 1 am; hold times typically less than 1 minute, and they always bend over backwards to make sure I'm happy. When I reported damaged discs, they have apologized, and upgraded me to an extra disc or 2 for the month.

Technology has spoiled us beyond belief; when the internet slows down a bit, we get upset, but I'm older than dirt (very young dirt), and came out of an era when "there's nothing on the tube" was a literal, factual statement after about 2am, and precious little was on before that.

No company ever asked for customer ratings or feedback, let alone a 24/7 hotline to call and ask why it's been taking longer than a few seconds to load up my choice among thousands of movies and shows. We had a choice of perhaps 2 B-grade television movies on a good Friday or Saturday night. Media companies never once asked for opinions of their meager programming. Lots of companies treated you like a criminal if you brought back an item you claimed was defective when you unpacked it.

Polite service of course, should be standard; that I agree with, but 24/7 hotlines with virtually no wait times, people ready to do your bidding that always bend over backwards and take as much time as needed to please you? That might be par for the course for you, but not for me, especially when I pay under $10 a month for service (in the case of both Netflix and Hostgator).

In some ways customer service has declined, but overall, being a consumer today is far less of a hassle, and you get far more service per dollar spent than at any time previously in my experience. And I would never call it normal to get personal attention for when my dollars spent are far less than the wages eaten up serving my whims. I am the first to complain if a company abuses me, but by the same token, the first to sing a company's praises when they spend far more trying to please me than they collect from me.

It is not outsourcing per se but subpar providers with low quality training.