I spent many years of my early working career in front facing customer service roles.  While studying I worked in retail, then a job as a waitress before going back to retail.  After studying my second job saw me go back into a customer service role at my current employer that got me a foot in the door at a large global company.

With all of this experience I think of have some ideas of what the basic requirements are for good customer service.  Recently I had the need to deal with two customer service centres and the experiences couldn’t have been any further apart.

One experience was with a very large global company and was one of the worst experiences I have ever had.  Two days of staying home for the delivery of a very expensive product that didn’t arrive, customer service reps who would say anything to get me off the phone and being advised I could pick up the product from their warehouse but not being able to tell me where that is.

The second experience was with a small overseas company who I contacted to see if I could buy a replacement part for a toy that my eldest had accidentally broken when opening the box.  They got in contact with me quickly and offered to send me a replacement free of charge as they wanted my son to be happy and appreciated my support.

I’d like to think that when I was in customer service I provided support that was more like the latter.  Possibly the large companies need to learn a lesson from the smaller companies who appreciate your business and think every customer is important.

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