Corporate America, Take Heed!

Dear Corporate America,

Lately, I have concluded that very few of you are capable of employing functioning customer service personnel. Normally, I am loathe to make blanket statements like this, but in this instance I feel I am more than justified. I wish I could convince you to adequately train these employees. (Make mine English-speaking and computer literate please.)

However, since you haven't taken it upon yourselves to hire competent employees, I am vowing the following: I will be test driving your customer service departments before I purchase your product. I am going to go to your websites and I will check them for ease of use. I will see if your Frequently Asked Questions section is at all helpful. I am going to call, email and live chat with your customer service departments about completely false problems.

If, and only if, you manage to pass my rigorous screening process, I will consider purchasing your product. It would be in your best interest to know what your competitors are doing customer-service wise because I will also be checking them out. Highest scorer wins!

Why have I been driven to these drastic measures? Because for many of my goods and services, you have failed in the areas of customer service.

While I don't feel safe enough in our litigious society to name the names of the bad, I will instead, name the good. (Althought wouldn't it be totally cool if the Motherhoot blog came under fire?!)

1. DirectTV--absolutely amazing customer service and not one problem in nearly six years of being a customer
2. First American Bank--again, amazing customer service (they haven't even made me feel stupid when I have emailed them the most stupid of questions!) for nearly 13 years of service
3. Apple--it's no secret that I believe the Apple people are Gods
4. Allied Waste--I pay, you take my garbage; you don't inundate me with junk mail
5. US Cellular--ok, the only bad thing I can say about you guys is that you don't offer the Iphone (see #3 above)

I hope this list isn't complete. Frankly, I don't want to go through my bill pay list at the moment to rate everyone. But if you don't see your name above and you know I am a customer or own one of your products, you might want to spend some time training and re-training the troops. Because they aren't getting the job done!

I look forward to doing business with you in the future!

Sincerely,
Susie Kline

PS While I won't be writing about the bad in my blog, I will be telling all of my family and friends about specific customer service. My email address book is large!