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this to a friend Today: May 09, 2001 at 8:29:44 PDT
It used to be that customer service wasn't so much a selling point for
advertising, but an expected part of doing business.
The motto, that the customer is always right, wasn't just a nifty
slogan, but standard practice if businesses wanted to stay around.
But in today's world, where time is judged in minutes and seconds
instead of weeks and days and the pressure to produce mounts, things have
apparently changed.
Now most everyone has a story or two about bad customer service be it
at a mall by an indifferent teenage sales clerk, or at a restaurant by a
rude waiter.
For one Las Vegas woman it was at a doctor's office.
Diagnosed with ovarian cancer early last summer, the 47-year-old woman
(who asked that her name not be used) turned to a local doctor for weekly
radiation treatments.
At the end of one of those visits, the woman discussed with an office
worker that she'd reached her maximum out-of-pocket expense as designated
by her insurance company, and that the company would be responsible for
the rest of the payments.
Another worker called the insurance company, however, and learned that
the woman was still responsible for $15 co-pay for the office visit.
"(The doctor's office) called me on my cell phone in the parking lot
(of the office) demanding payment," she said. "It's not as if I wasn't
going to come back and see them the next week. I said, Do you always track
your cancer patients in the parking lot for money?' I was appalled."
It gets worse.
The woman, a registered nurse, noticed later that she had been
repeatedly billed by the doctor's office for blood work performed
elsewhere. But when she pointed out the discrepancy, she couldn't get
anyone in the office to delete the charges.
However, she was persistent. The woman kept calling the doctor's office
and the billing service it used until the charges were canceled.
She didn't stop with her payments. While going over an itemized list of
her charges, the woman noticed her insurance company incorrectly
reimbursed the doctor $10,500, which she said the doctor's office had
taken.
She then notified her insurance company, which promptly got its money
back.
"So their poor customer service cost them $10,500," she said.
While this story may be an extreme example, it does beg the question:
Is customer service what it used to be?
While there aren't many polls showing the level of customer
satisfaction with services rendered, a recent Associated Press article
placed part of the blame of last year's poor retail sales squarely on the
head of bad customer service.
"Companies and organizations are more concerned with providing good
customer service than ever before," said Doug Howardell, president of ACA
Group, a Los Angeles company that works with clients on ways to improve
customer-business relations. "I think every organization is looking for
ways to improve customer service."
What is customer service?
"We define customer service as constantly and consistently giving your
customers what they need and want," Howardell said. "Our whole premise is
that it's more than just a smile and thank you, although that's part of
it.
He said good service breaks down into three elements:
Having a customer-friendly process.
Having constant dialogue with a customer.
Giving the customer what they need and want.
Consumers should expect good customer service, Howardell said, and
should let their feelings be known -- positive or negative -- in the same
way as a parent to a child.
"What good parents do is praise good children's behavior to enforce
that," Howardell said. "The rule still applies. When you get good customer
service, praise it, and when you don't, tell them and their supervisor."
Dining disaster
But sometimes, that doesn't happen.
Pam Marcello, 58, who has lived in Las Vegas for more than 50 years,
quit going to a favorite upscale restaurant several months ago after
receiving bad service during a special dinner for she herself, her
husband, her boss and her boss's mother.
"I recommended it," Marcello said. "I'd never had anything but
excellent service before."
But 2 1/2 half hours of wrong and missing orders, cold food and a
broken cap on her car battery (courtesy of a valet who attempted to
jumpstart Marcello's car) changed all that.
Even an attempt by the restaurant manager to remedy the situation
didn't help.
"He apologized and said he wanted us to come back and have dinner on
him, to show us customer service was good," she said.
But when Marcello called to make arrangements for the makeup dinner for
the four people, she was told the offer was only good for two of them to
dine.
Marcello, her husband and her boss did go back to the restaurant. The
service was better, she said, and the entire meal was complementary, but
by then it was too late -- the negative feeling caused by the earlier poor
service was not going away.
"They lost a good customer," Marcello said.
Complaint central
Choice -- the ability to take business elsewhere -- is usually a
consumer's last option in the fight against poor service. But it's
important to note there are other options.
Robin Capalbo, membership operations manager of the Better Business
Bureau of Southern Nevada, said when a customer receives bad service, he
or she should first talk with the offending employee -- and always in a
calm manner.
If that doesn't settle anything, ask to speak to the manager or even
the manager's supervisor.
"I would say in most cases if people would just sit down and talk about
things then there would be a lot less problems," Capalbo said.
If, however, after talking it out the customer is still unhappy with
the results, she recommends filing a complaint with the BBB, which is a
nonprofit organization funded by nearly 2,500 members in Southern Nevada.
Although the organization cannot do much more than write a letter to
the company, and perhaps revoke its membership if there are enough
complaints, any comments go into a file and are available to consumers
when they call.
Overall, she said, "consumer comments" (as the BBB calls them) are up
this year compared to last, although Capalbo noted that there are also
more businesses in the growing Las Vegas area to complain about.
Consumer reports
How important is customer service -- especially to a city built on
tourism?
"The best investment in our future is quality customer service," said
Van Heffner, whose many titles include president and CEO of both the
Restaurant Association and the Nevada Hotel and Motel Lodging Association.
He said many businesses -- especially restaurants and hotel-casinos --
are relying on new ways to improve customer service, such as increasing
their employee training.
For example, when the Venetian opened two years ago more than 70,000
applicants were put through several levels of screening programs designed,
in part, to test the ability to work with customers.
These include a personality profile, group activities with other
candidates and auditions, where would-be employees performed their job
description in an artificial environment.
"We'd rather see how someone responds behind the scenes than out
there," said Michael French, the Venetian's senior vice president of
casino and hotel operations.
Still, as helpful as these programs may be, when it comes to getting
good customer service, it may ultimately boil down to one simple truth:
"Do unto others as you would have done unto you," otherwise known as the
Golden Rule.
"If you want good customer service in the world," Howardell said,
"start spreading it by giving it." Printable text version | Mail this to a friend Las Vegas SUN main page
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