Has Technology Killed Customer Service?

I read Sherin's blog and I too, would like to vent out my frustrations here. After all the drama, we came to a conclusion that you can have all the technology in the world or the best product in the world, but it's all useless if you don't have the right people at the forefront of the technology - in other words, customer service. You can boast and claim all you want in being one the country's pioneer in "providing payment gateway services and that you are dedicated to provide and develop high quality diversify network services to our customer". But when it comes to dealing with customer issues, all of that means nothing to me as they are probably too focused in developing and building their technology (which is not all great by the way) and forget the 'human' aspect of business.

Customer service is something I dare say we, at RedRibbon Days pride ourselves in (touch wood!). I say that only because we are soooooo passionate and particular about keeping our customers happy. After all, we don't call ourselves 'The Pleasure Team' for nothing. We really really get excited when we receive great feedback from customers and we actually do get a bit depressed when there are the occassional one or two unhappy ones who we just can't seem to satisfy.

My point is, we try our best to attend to our customers the best way we can and go out of our way, even if it means breaking a company policy or two, to satisfy them. Of course, having said that, we can't keep EVERYONE happy and there are times where we are unable to keep them happy and can't make any exceptions because if we did, we might as well be running a charity organisation. But at least, there's this conscious in us that we are aware of how we address and handle our customers to not offend them in any way.

But this is not the case for that particular 'party' that we were dealing with as how Sherin explained in her blog. Talking to their support team, I may as well be speaking and complaining to a 5 year old child. There was not a sound or hint of empathy and the person who I spoke to sounded like.."that's too bad, there's nothing we can do..it's not our fault"....well not in the exact words, but as a customer, that's how I interpreted it. The least she could say is something along the lines of " I will bring this up to mgmt and will try to see how we can resolve or compensate you" , especially when it's kind of obvious that they were at fault as well. On top of that, I was trying hard to understand what all her emails meant and trying to make her understand what I was trying to say.

But being a Msian, I've kind of come to terms that as a country where we're far from being dubbed as 'developed' and where English is not a first language, I guess these are things that we have to put up with. I'm pretty sure everyone here in Msia has experienced really bad customer service every now and then, even with big organisations like telcos or banks. I guess we have a long way to go if we want to be known as a developed country.

Well, my thought is that the people who you put in the frontline to attend to your customers as a first point of contact represents your company, which we strive to continue providing; to set ourselves apart from the rest. I know now is the new Internet age, where technology is suppose to make things easier and to cut costs, - but I don't think it will ever replace human interaction. There are some things that machines can' t handle and we shouldn't lose focus on that, no matter how 'canggih' the company is.

But to be fair, after all the 'ding-donging' around and numerous emails and phone calls, they eventually said that they will compensate and really want to resolve our issue. A bit too late for me though as it already left a really really bad impression, not to mention a horrible experience. All they needed to say was that they will 'consider' us the compensation if the issue couldn't be resolved. Simple as that. Wasted my time and unnecassary rise in my blood pressure. Don't charge us the 4% transaction fee for nothing, especially when you admit that it's your fault as well.