8 ms·

At some point customer service died. Businesses of seem to no longer be interested in dealing with customers. Good customers come in all shapes and sizes, and o

At some point customer service died. Businesses of seem to no longer be interested in dealing with customers. Good customers come in all shapes and sizes, and often don't exactly fit a cookie cutter. It's frustrating to see businesses just cut and run the moment something becomes a problem that needs more than a series of pre-scripted responses to be resolved.

lmz 11mo ago
That's what you get for the low cost of entry. When most customers are self-signup (and probably low margin) there's no individual responsible for them. Good in that you never have to speak to a salesperson, bad in that there will be no-one to take care of you if things go sideways.
- Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
  Yes. I think that is a reasonable point. When cost of retention exceeds the cost of acquisition.
atmavatar 11mo ago
There was a time when the general consensus was that treating customers well would result in greater retention, which, in turn, would ultimately prove to be net positive profit-wise over time. It seems like that changed somewhere around the turn of the century, whereby businesses started to decide that it was better to cut down on customer service, and in some cases, go so far as to ban customers. The first cases of this I recall reading about had to do with Best Buy, and specifically their policy of banning people from their stores who made a lot of returns. I'm not really sure how it ultimately maths out - i.e., whether it's long-term optimal to drop troublesome customers or merely short-term optimal, and this was primarily taken from the perspective of retail. As such, I'm sure the math changes a little for subscription services. However, I also recall my prior employer's support activity followed a power law distribution across its clients, so it wouldn't surprise me if a policy to drop particularly noisy clients is a net savings there as well.
- Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
  For brick and mortar retail that isn't fast fashion or supermarkets, dropping troublesome customers is generally extremely sensible. Profit on most goods is low - single digit % typically - and a single return can eliminate the profit margins on a dozen sales. Sometimes cost can be reclaimed from goods providers - i.e. genuinely defective or manufacturer refurbishment programs - and sometimes they can resell the item as new. But if the item has been used, broken by the customer, etc. the loss is significant. It turns out that some people are more honest than others, and some people are directly trying to scam companies. When one 'dodgy' customer can eliminate the value of 10 'real' sales with every return the maths say to ban people quickly. A little anecdote - I have a distant relative who, circa 2005, would buy a vacuum cleaner use it, and then return it. He rotated stores (hardware stores, supermarkets, electronic stores) until he gradually got banned from them all. Once that happened he moved house. Not only had he almost certainly spent more in time and fuel than a reasonable vacuum would have cost him (which I will note he could afford); but the cost and waste he has incurred on both individual companies and society at large through that and similar schemes is staggering. I don't know if he's still at it - or alive - but the people he was surrounding himself with all saw such behaviour as reasonable.
  - jlaternman 11mo ago
    All true, I have no doubt, but this experience has weighted your judgement here IMO. That isn't the force at play in modern customer service policies.
- chii 11mo ago
  > treating customers well would result in greater retention, which, in turn, would ultimately prove to be net positive profit-wise over time. may be true in the past, but a business cannot scale up good customer service - it's at best a linear scaling, where each new customer costs the same fixed amount due to needing high touch/people to manage that customer. With the internet, businesses have found scaling to work better by ensuring your fixed costs stay fixed even if you scaled up customer count - this includes support/call centers etc. Without doing this, the business cannot scale up exponentially.
- 11mo ago
silisili 11mo ago
On one hand, this makes me incredibly sad. It means that all of us, as consumers, agreed we'd rather save a buck than get acceptable service. On the other hand, as someone who did customer service in my younger years, 95% of calls were PEBKAC, so it's essentially a giant money drain for things of no real concern to you as a company. I've often wondered how successful it would be to charge $3 or $5 per call, refunding the money in cases said call was needed.
- postpawl 11mo ago
  The worst customer service is usually for things where you don't have a choice, like when your mortgage gets sold to a new servicer.
- CamperBob2 11mo ago
  In principle I agree with the concept of charging for support and refunding if the issue is not at the customer's end. I'd certainly be fine with that myself, even if it cost $50 or so to get a responsible human on the line when there's trouble with a service like banking, payments, or business-critical SaaS providers. I think Microsoft tried that at one point, but they didn't stick with it for some reason. Maybe it leads to a lot of knock-down, drag-out arguments about whose fault something is.
- FateOfNations 11mo ago
  The problem is dealing with those other 5% of calls. If you are in a 5% situation, you're seemingly SOL these days.
bsder 11mo ago
> At some point customer service died. At some point enforcement died. It used to be that locking someone out of their money would wind up with people in jail. Now, it's not just a cost of doing business but also viewed as a positive by state actors.
- Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
  ...when exactly would you have gone to jail for this?
  - jlaternman 11mo ago
    Yep. I'd like to see some news stories confirming this magical past.
  - bsder 11mo ago
    Lots of banking access laws were put in place after the Great Depression and vestiges still remain although most of them have been repealed. See, for example, Section 37.002(c) of the Texas finance code: "An office or operation may not remain closed for more than three consecutive days, excluding days on which the bank is customarily closed, without the banking commissioner’s approval." Laws like these were put in place because failing to disburse someone's money could cause a bank run.
hpdigidrifter 11mo ago
Wise customer service is amazingly good though. I'd much prefer to use a company that spends 100% of the time on 80% of customers than one that spends 80% of it's time on 20% of the customers OP can't even provide proof from the tax office of being at that address, it's an angry rant rather than the whole picture. Would you go into business with him with nothing but a phone bill as proof?
- robocat 11mo ago
  I've had good interactions with Wise twice. I couldn't log on, got the problem escalated, then they got me to create a logged session in their app, and from that they diagnosed the problem was due to larger text on a smaller screen causing their app to crash. I've rarely had technical faults diagnosed and fixed by any company.
  - OhioMan2943 11mo ago
    Cough economist and financial times
- anonymousiam 11mo ago
  Did you read the post? The business had just moved. Was it supposed to wait on the tax office for the next tax statement, which could arrive months later?
  - selcuka 11mo ago
    > Was it supposed to wait on the tax office for the next tax statement, which could arrive months later? In Australia you can get a Company Extract from ASIC for $10. Apparently it's free in NZ [1]. I believe they haven't actually updated their registered company address for some reason, and that triggered Wise's systems. [1] https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-centre/keeping-company-details-up-to-date/getting-a-copy-of-your-company-information/ https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-cent...
- selcuka 11mo ago
attendant3446 11mo ago
I was thinking the same thing recently (dealing with 2 different companies). As soon as the company get some market share - all customer support is just gone. You only get some automated messages in reply, and if you're lucky to speak with someone on the phone - they still just read the answers from some predefined FAQ.
recroad 11mo ago
Completely agree. I run a small company and great customer service has been a competitive advantage in what is more or less a red ocean. Just the ability to speak to a human being goes a long way, and if you actually solve their problem, you not only build loyalty but referrals.
charles_f 11mo ago
With these companies, if it takes more to keep the 10% of customers that will leave because of bad service than providing good service, then bad service will be delivered.

lmz 11mo ago

That's what you get for the low cost of entry. When most customers are self-signup (and probably low margin) there's no individual responsible for them. Good in that you never have to speak to a salesperson, bad in that there will be no-one to take care of you if things go sideways.

Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
Yes. I think that is a reasonable point. When cost of retention exceeds the cost of acquisition.

atmavatar 11mo ago

There was a time when the general consensus was that treating customers well would result in greater retention, which, in turn, would ultimately prove to be net positive profit-wise over time. It seems like that changed somewhere around the turn of the century, whereby businesses started to decide that it was better to cut down on customer service, and in some cases, go so far as to ban customers. The first cases of this I recall reading about had to do with Best Buy, and specifically their policy of banning people from their stores who made a lot of returns. I'm not really sure how it ultimately maths out - i.e., whether it's long-term optimal to drop troublesome customers or merely short-term optimal, and this was primarily taken from the perspective of retail. As such, I'm sure the math changes a little for subscription services. However, I also recall my prior employer's support activity followed a power law distribution across its clients, so it wouldn't surprise me if a policy to drop particularly noisy clients is a net savings there as well.

Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
For brick and mortar retail that isn't fast fashion or supermarkets, dropping troublesome customers is generally extremely sensible. Profit on most goods is low - single digit % typically - and a single return can eliminate the profit margins on a dozen sales. Sometimes cost can be reclaimed from goods providers - i.e. genuinely defective or manufacturer refurbishment programs - and sometimes they can resell the item as new. But if the item has been used, broken by the customer, etc. the loss is significant. It turns out that some people are more honest than others, and some people are directly trying to scam companies. When one 'dodgy' customer can eliminate the value of 10 'real' sales with every return the maths say to ban people quickly. A little anecdote - I have a distant relative who, circa 2005, would buy a vacuum cleaner use it, and then return it. He rotated stores (hardware stores, supermarkets, electronic stores) until he gradually got banned from them all. Once that happened he moved house. Not only had he almost certainly spent more in time and fuel than a reasonable vacuum would have cost him (which I will note he could afford); but the cost and waste he has incurred on both individual companies and society at large through that and similar schemes is staggering. I don't know if he's still at it - or alive - but the people he was surrounding himself with all saw such behaviour as reasonable.
- jlaternman 11mo ago
  All true, I have no doubt, but this experience has weighted your judgement here IMO. That isn't the force at play in modern customer service policies.
chii 11mo ago
> treating customers well would result in greater retention, which, in turn, would ultimately prove to be net positive profit-wise over time. may be true in the past, but a business cannot scale up good customer service - it's at best a linear scaling, where each new customer costs the same fixed amount due to needing high touch/people to manage that customer. With the internet, businesses have found scaling to work better by ensuring your fixed costs stay fixed even if you scaled up customer count - this includes support/call centers etc. Without doing this, the business cannot scale up exponentially.
11mo ago

silisili 11mo ago

On one hand, this makes me incredibly sad. It means that all of us, as consumers, agreed we'd rather save a buck than get acceptable service. On the other hand, as someone who did customer service in my younger years, 95% of calls were PEBKAC, so it's essentially a giant money drain for things of no real concern to you as a company. I've often wondered how successful it would be to charge $3 or $5 per call, refunding the money in cases said call was needed.

postpawl 11mo ago
The worst customer service is usually for things where you don't have a choice, like when your mortgage gets sold to a new servicer.
CamperBob2 11mo ago
In principle I agree with the concept of charging for support and refunding if the issue is not at the customer's end. I'd certainly be fine with that myself, even if it cost $50 or so to get a responsible human on the line when there's trouble with a service like banking, payments, or business-critical SaaS providers. I think Microsoft tried that at one point, but they didn't stick with it for some reason. Maybe it leads to a lot of knock-down, drag-out arguments about whose fault something is.
FateOfNations 11mo ago
The problem is dealing with those other 5% of calls. If you are in a 5% situation, you're seemingly SOL these days.

bsder 11mo ago

> At some point customer service died. At some point enforcement died. It used to be that locking someone out of their money would wind up with people in jail. Now, it's not just a cost of doing business but also viewed as a positive by state actors.

Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
...when exactly would you have gone to jail for this?
- jlaternman 11mo ago
  Yep. I'd like to see some news stories confirming this magical past.
- bsder 11mo ago
  Lots of banking access laws were put in place after the Great Depression and vestiges still remain although most of them have been repealed. See, for example, Section 37.002(c) of the Texas finance code: "An office or operation may not remain closed for more than three consecutive days, excluding days on which the bank is customarily closed, without the banking commissioner’s approval." Laws like these were put in place because failing to disburse someone's money could cause a bank run.

hpdigidrifter 11mo ago

Wise customer service is amazingly good though. I'd much prefer to use a company that spends 100% of the time on 80% of customers than one that spends 80% of it's time on 20% of the customers OP can't even provide proof from the tax office of being at that address, it's an angry rant rather than the whole picture. Would you go into business with him with nothing but a phone bill as proof?

robocat 11mo ago
I've had good interactions with Wise twice. I couldn't log on, got the problem escalated, then they got me to create a logged session in their app, and from that they diagnosed the problem was due to larger text on a smaller screen causing their app to crash. I've rarely had technical faults diagnosed and fixed by any company.
- OhioMan2943 11mo ago
  Cough economist and financial times
anonymousiam 11mo ago
Did you read the post? The business had just moved. Was it supposed to wait on the tax office for the next tax statement, which could arrive months later?
- selcuka 11mo ago
  > Was it supposed to wait on the tax office for the next tax statement, which could arrive months later? In Australia you can get a Company Extract from ASIC for $10. Apparently it's free in NZ [1]. I believe they haven't actually updated their registered company address for some reason, and that triggered Wise's systems. [1] https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-centre/keeping-company-details-up-to-date/getting-a-copy-of-your-company-information/ https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-cent...
selcuka 11mo ago

attendant3446 11mo ago

I was thinking the same thing recently (dealing with 2 different companies). As soon as the company get some market share - all customer support is just gone. You only get some automated messages in reply, and if you're lucky to speak with someone on the phone - they still just read the answers from some predefined FAQ.

recroad 11mo ago

Completely agree. I run a small company and great customer service has been a competitive advantage in what is more or less a red ocean. Just the ability to speak to a human being goes a long way, and if you actually solve their problem, you not only build loyalty but referrals.

charles_f 11mo ago

With these companies, if it takes more to keep the 10% of customers that will leave because of bad service than providing good service, then bad service will be delivered.