Who has the best customer service? \ stacker news ~meta

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4884 sats \ 18 comments \ @kr 4 Nov 2023 meta

One thing I’ve noticed in the last few years is that customer service (across all industries) seems to be getting worse.

Perhaps there is some correlation to inflation and a general decline in the quality of goods and services as people prefer to optimize for cash today (skimping on customer service/quality materials) rather than build lasting relationships with their customers.

Or maybe I’m just imagining this, and you have a different experience.

I’d love to hear your perspective on a couple of things:

Are you seeing changes (better or worse) to customer service in your life over the last few years?
What are the best examples of insanely good customer service you’ve seen? Feel free to share links to any companies who deserve recognition!
As a bonus, what are some things you’d like to see Stacker News implement to improve customer service/onboarding?

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3295 sats \ 2 replies \ @davidw 4 Nov 2023

1. Changes in Customer Service

Knowing a few people who have worked in or had hospitality businesses, I think we are witnessing a few different things.

Higher Expectations Firstly, inflation aside, it’s my belief that people’s expectations have actually increased. I have seen it in family and friends. You might not have witnessed this yourself since 2020, but when going to a hotel or a restaurant, people are expecting higher levels of service than they are actually paying for. The general public is getting very aggravated (at least in the West) at not receiving perfection.

What used to be a pub lunch, people are now thinking they are fine dining. You can see it in TripAdvisor ratings alone in Europe. Expectations have increased, during times that quality is decreasing. I’m really not sure what’s triggered this, but this is compounded by the fact that many in the general public have a short fuse and are more willing to voice this. For reasons we’re all probably very aware, no longer feeling they are staying ahead.

Inflation / shrinkflation Secondly, inflation is clearly exacerbating this. As places try to make dishes smaller or inferior quality. If you’re a regular, you’ve likely seen prices increase 15-20% and if you haven’t, you’ve witnessed shrinkflation. And the general public will quite often believe the businesses are the greedy ones, without considering the increased costs for all businesses of late. One end result is then increased automation, either in place, or for online services like helpdesks. To prevent needing to sacrifice the product quality itself. But it’s shrinkflation in services.

Automation That is a clear trend, removing people from the cost during customer interactions. We have witnessed it with more ‘self-service’ restaurants, where you order at the bar or via QR and go and collect it via a beeper. I also witnessed in some cities, companies sharing the same staff. i.e. you have multiple huts or markets where you can order different cuisines from different establishments and you have general staff to collect (or perhaps deliver) your orders. It’s a different concept (but as inferior it is as a service) it is a pretty decent experience being able to order different foods from different places, and receive it at the same time when dining with friends/family. Something that wasn’t all too common in years prior. In general, this caters to greater personalisation.

Tip Culture In the U.S. I’ve heard plenty of examples of tip culture getting out of hand, in spite of reduced levels of service. But I also witnessed this on card terminals in Europe.

I’d be curious to hear from someone working in that industry there. Is it because the opportunities for receiving tips and building personable experiences is reduced or because there is a greater need to receive tips in order to stay ahead of inflation financially?

2. Good examples

Generally I think that any businesses recognising and acknowledging loyalty, and ones that are willing to invest time getting to know their customers are worth sticking with. Especially when it’s all too easy to put all customer interaction behind a queuing system.

Recognising Loyalty I had an experience a few months ago, where on a call with American Express, the lady took a few moments to wish to thank me for having used their services for 9 years. It was such a simple thing to draw my attention to, they will always have account creation dates on customer profiles, but it really did have an impact. Even if I wanted to debank myself as many around these woods would suggest I do, Amex may be one of the last standing for that simple gesture. In spite of their horrific merchant fees.

Showing Empathy One other thing I have witnessed are those businesses that allow customers to talk, share their frustration and being listened to. One thing I heard was during 2020, an older lady ringing a local business and asking some random unrelated questions, but proceeding to tell the person in the business all about her life and family. She was ringing simply for a chat, because of feeling lonely and isolated. And this person recognised that and kept her on the phone for 10 minutes, despite the priorities of the business at that time.

3. SN Suggestions

Personalisation When logging-in (especially for the first time), asking people what their interests are. So as to be able to suggest the top rated posts in the last 90 days from those categories. This to me is important, as SN currently only has ephemeral content. If you’re not logging in frequently, or don’t read the newsletter, we all know you’ll miss content. Particularly given search, as I’m sure the team will admit, is still not quite there yet.

New Profiles / Bios One thing I love about the ‘recent’ section is quite often seeing new profiles being created and people welcoming the new users. If we could encourage more people to write a bit more about their area of interest, I feel like it would lead to even more natural conversations, improve the quality of welcomes, stickiness and early ‘aha’ moments, as they receive their first zaps.

It’s great that these new profiles ARE visible, but during the next upcoming wave of new users, it’s going to feel an awful lot like Facebook ‘happy birthday’ messages… too generic and absent of meaning.

More Community Features Currently we’re not really ‘following’ people but quality content. It would be great if the trust graph would show us which are our most trusted contacts on SN, and to indicate to us if someone we are aligned with has upvoted or commented on some content.

Lightning Torch How do we get people to realise that the more you engage & zap on StackerNews, the more you will receive? I’m not sure even more seasoned visitors understand this.

I’m wondering if we could try and participate in some sort of Zap Rodeo (or whatever we want to call it). For that to display a random engaged user to send the sats to. If say 10 users pass-on the sats and get their cowboy hat, the sats get boomeranged back to the original user’s account. If it sounds too gimmicky and forced, that’s not the intention. In general I just think we can do more to get newbies zapping & funding their accounts, rather than just using the account as a glorified rss feed. Which will inevitably lead to periods of disengagement.

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 5 Nov 2023

Incredible feedback!

498 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 5 Nov 2023

Thanks @kr. Great question too. A lot that can be learnt from industry.

For instance, I used to do an ‘app club’ in my old job every month or so. Reviewing unrelated apps in different niches to try and find good experiences or UX to potentially repurpose as ours. After some time we switched it to a particular theme, e.g. new user onboarding, with each able to grab 1 of 10 suggested apps.

What was refreshing was actually the team wanting to distance themselves too heavily from conversion optimisation (involving lengthy onboarding steps & granular personalisation) and more towards transparency and snappiness. Colleagues spoke about wanting to increase trust and differentiate vs other competitor products, that were employing every psychological trick in the book to hook you into a short-term subscription.

A lot can be gained from not following the herd, as you highlighted with your shopping bag example. Definite balancing act there.

1127 sats \ 0 replies \ @k8 5 Nov 2023

Diminished client care overall and prob attributable to service staff not being armed with skills to field objections - customers want value 4 value - or in dirty fiat terms…want their dollars to go further
Above average service was from a mechanic in small rural town that has a commitment to client care and understands that is what sets him apart and chosen - price is a secondary consideration from his customers
The warm welcome is great opening- @k00b especially😊- for onboarding newcomers, ask people “what brings you here” ? useful ask for an organization to understand why users are here

1187 sats \ 2 replies \ @tnuts420 4 Nov 2023

i work customer service for a large telecommunications company, and they are actively trying to make it worse. the automated system makes it intentionally difficult to speak with a live agent, and when you do it's going to be an outsourcer. everything is forced self-service, they want you to use their app or digital options, so they remove agent's abilities to assist customers over the phone. metrics are judged primarily by sales numbers and average call time, not resolving customer issues, or customer satisfaction.

i will say i get highly discounted services, good pay and benefits, and work 100% from home. but it is very frustrating working customer service for a company that obviously does not care about providing good customer service. they view customer interactions as an opportunity to upsell or add services, that's about it.

498 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 5 Nov 2023

100% witnessed this in the financial world too. Ai might help bridge that gap if the knowledge base has enough content, but quite often that is not the case. The people it hurts the most are the older generation, who have more time, are more technically illiterate and often have far more pressing concerns.

These businesses call it “cost to serve”. Cost to serve each customer, per year. Or “self-serve”, where all services are accessible from the app(s).

Controlling this cost, is one of the only ways in their mind to remaining profitable and allowing them to fuel their advertising funnel or acquire new customers with more ‘attractive’ rates & prices.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 4 Nov 2023

yeah this is the kind of stuff i’m talking about, seems like all banking/phone services are taking this approach

958 sats \ 0 replies \ @emmanuelrosa 4 Nov 2023

I've also noticed the worsening quality of services.
I've had good experiences with a dental office, but that was in a different country. I can't say the same in my country.
I think SN kicks ass as-is.

912 sats \ 0 replies \ @premitive1 4 Nov 2023

High end electronics. As an electronics installer and electrical technician I have occasion to call the manufacturers of high end electronics to get troubleshooting help. I deal mostly with technical support, but I've had to talk to some customer service reps as well. Apparently, paying $15k for a computer and touch-screen all in one device (MFD) comes with a certain level of lifetime support. One time a customer's brand new 22" Garmin MFDs bricked during the first update. Garmin took a $30k hold on his credit card, send him brand new ones express, and had him send the broken ones to them to get the hold removed. Unfortunately the MFDs bricking sucked, but everything else about the experience involving the company seemed extremely straight forward and convenient. (For someone who can afford a random $30k hold on card.) Luxury goods have the best customer service.

904 sats \ 1 reply \ @drfred 4 Nov 2023

costco by far

they take anything back without questions asked costco is only interested in keeping you as a member costco has motivated employees because they are paid well their margins are the lowest in the industry costco makes most of its profits with membership fees

they take cash if you pay cash, you get everything cheaper the only thing i could wish for is the acceptance of real money

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Ray 5 Nov 2023

Can you explain what you mean by if you pay cash you get everything cheaper?

759 sats \ 0 replies \ @9ener1c 4 Nov 2023

I think it’s getting slightly worse but I’m not certain.

My theory is that two related things might be happening:

Outsourced customer service to agents that learn a flowchart, some simple software and can therefore only really help in a handful of simple ways. They’re not invested in the business, and they’re incapable of and not empowered to take action on the issues that require a bit of creativity. That would be too time consuming and costly to the business.
The above strategy is enabled by modern business analytics tools being available to all businesses — large and small — over the past decade or so, and this has led to a lowering of standards in the actual customer service activity that we would like to see.

The reason that it causes standards to go down is that In the past, none of this could be measured well, but it was obviously important, so good businesses placed a priority on getting good, empowered employees to fill those positions. Now all that matters is keeping average response times and ratings above a certain level, which results in a lower bar being met, mostly sustained by those simple common issues that arise.

475 sats \ 0 replies \ @shyfire 5 Nov 2023

The best customer service I have ever experienced was in the start9 Telegram channel. Incredible responsiveness and dedication, and I generally evaluate support quite critically.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 4 Nov 2023

one thing that lightning payment splits enable is to allow anyone to earn a fraction of the stacker news fee in perpetuity.

what if instead of hiring a customer service team as SN scales (most social companies outsource this work), SN could allow the best stackers to help newcomers learn how to use the site.

as a reward, and as an incentive to provide great service, the stackers who help new folks get up and running could earn a percentage of the new person’s future earnings (kind of like a referral fee, but for customer service).

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 4 Nov 2023

one of the best examples of customer service i’ve seen lately was when i went to whole foods for some groceries.

all the other grocery stores near me don’t provide bags unless you pay $0.25-$1/bag, and then ask you to bag your groceries on your own.

the person at whole foods didn’t even ask about bags, and automatically double-bagged everything.

i think this kind of service actually used to be common, but it’s a real breath of fresh air to get this service today.