Radius Global Official Blog

Customers are lifeblood for all the businesses throughout the world. From my point of view, a good customer service is all about bringing customers back. Most importantly, customer service is strongly inter-linked with word-of-mouth. A bad customer service experience with a product or service multiplies its after affects many times when an infected customer discusses that experience with his or her peers. And we all know that, in this era of globalization and social networking, people trust more on peer recommendations rather than traditional ways of marketing.

That’s why most of the leading companies in world do have separate customer service departments. But unfortunately not all of them have been able to provide what their customers perceive and want from them. We have seen lot of businesses failing just because of poor customer service.

Case in point:

There are too many examples to quote here but I would like to share my personal bad experience with one of the leading telecom companies of Pakistan “Wateen Telecom”. I will take this live example to show “how big companies fail in providing customer service?”

I have (infact had) a Wateen Wireless Broadband Connection. I had been using Wateen services since 2008 but I hadn’t used internet service of Wateen from three months. But recently, at the time of need, Wateen discontinued the service. So, I called their 111-365-111 UN number to inquire about this termination of service matter and to renew my account. But it was all against my expectations.

First of all, I went through the voice prompts and looked for appropriate option to select, but unexpectedly there was no option for “recharge your account”. Then I opted for “0” to talk with the customer service representative. As per newly launched promotion by Wateen, I asked him to waive off my dues for last three months. CSR asked me to hold for a moment but, after a long hold of almost 10 minutes, he resumed the call and said, “This offer is for our valued customers only, and you don’t fall in that category. You need to submit all the pending dues”. And I freaked out after hearing that I, being their customer since last year or so, still don’t fall in the valued customers’ category.

I asked him,” Am I not your valued customer?”, and he responded, “No sir it’s not that, you are our valued customer, but this offer is for those customers who purchased the new connection in 2009 only”. Within no time, I responded, “How long I have been using your services?”. CSR replied, “But sir you purchased the connection in 2008”. I furiously replied, “As I have been using your services since 2008, so I must be your more valuable customer than those who purchased in 2009?”. And he kept silent for a moment and replied, “No sir, there is nothing I can do for you”.

I responded, “What do you mean by that? In other words, you are asking me to stop using your services, and through your connection, rite?” and he finally committed, “Yes sir, you can stop using our services”.



Ending note:

Well, customer service is an art but it’s also the only area where all the companies can achieve the impossible and make a difference by influencing customer's choices. I request all the readers of my article to share this case with your peers and set an example for all the companies to learn from these types of scenarios.

The whole purpose of this article is to create awareness of customer service value among companies and professionals. In this competitive world, we must focus on customer service through professional development training. We must train our teams on regular basis and should equip them with latest methods for handling queries of customers.